MAIN QUESTIONS 
IN RELIGION 



"WILLARD CHAMBERLAIN SELLECK. 



LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 




Class _____ 

Book 

Gopigta^? 






CQESRIGHT DEPOSffi 



Main Questions in Religion 

A Study of Fundamentals 

CRANE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL LECTURES 
AND OTHER ESSAYS 

BY 
WILLARD CHAMBERLAIN SELLECK, D.D. 

Author of "The Spiritual Outlook" and "The New 
Appreciation of the Bible" 




BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER 

TORONTO! THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED 



Copyright, 1916, by Willard Chamberlain Sellbck 



All Rights Reserved 



-S3! 



Made in the United States of America. 



The Gorham Press,JBUwton, U. S. A. 

SEP 23 1916 

©CI.A437803 



TO THE MEMORY OP 
A DEAR AND BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER 



PREFACE 

NO lengthy preface is required for this volume. 
Its contents must speak for themselves. 
The four lectures are printed exactly as they 
were delivered, at Tufts College, Massachusetts, in 
May, 1915. They aim to deal candidly, searchingly 
and constructively with some of the ultimate problems 
of human life. 

The two "other essays" are added because the mat- 
ters of which they treat are of pressing importance. 
The purification of Christianity through the elimina- 
tion of its historic accretions of error is not more than 
half accomplished yet. The process must be carried 
much nearer completion before this exalted religion 
can achieve its rightful and powerful leadership of the 
modern world. In proportion as this cleansing, recti- 
fying work goes on, Christianity will become more and 
more the effectual spiritual ally of the great demo- 
cratic movement, which alone in these dark days ap- 
pears to hold out the promise of preserving the price- 
less principle of liberty in the momentous develop- 
ments impending among the nations. Together a 
purified Christianity and a spiritualized Democracy 
will establish the reign of love and freedom, alike in 
the individual heart and in all social relationships, 
and thus bring in the era of permanent peace and uni- 
versal prosperity for which the weary race has waited 
too long. 

Wiixard C. Sei/leck. 
68 Mendon Road, 

Cumberland Hill, R. I., 
June 7, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

Lectures 

I. What is the Great Reality in Religion? . 11 

II. What is the Validity op Faith? .... 88 

III. What Can We Know op God? 52 

IV. What Shall We Believe) AboutImmOrtality? 77 

Other Essays 

I. Traditional Christianity and Essential 

Christianity 103 

II. Christianity and Democracy . . . . . 125* 



LECTURES 



"Before all else, it behoves us to secure the founda- 
tions of our spiritual life," — Rudolf Euchen. 



MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 



w 



WHAT IS THE GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION? 

HEN a distinct and severe shock comes to 
the human soul, through some great calam- 
ity or bereavement, fundamental questions 
are likely to be raised anew. Secondary matters drop 
at once into their due subordination, while thought and 
feeling wrestle with the primary problems of being 
and the meaning of existence and the order of the 
universe. Words and phrases lightly uttered in happy 
hours suddenly acquire a doubtful significance; one 
is almost startled by a fresh, overpowering sense of 
the mystery of life; and, without rebellion or positive 
distrust, he simply bows himself in solemn wonder, 
and waits for light "more than they that watch for 
the morning." 

At the present moment the world is in the midst of 
a social cataclysm whose appalling destructiveness 
staggers the stoutest heart. The frightful conflict 
which is devastating Europe is like the inundation of a 
continent. No man can measure the magnitude of the 
disaster, or in imagination conceive its far-reaching 
consequences. Inevitably, therefore, it impresses and 
oppresses every thoughtful person; a mood of un- 
wonted seriousness prevails among all classes; and 
many are asking what is the relation of this gigantic 

11 



12 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

catastrophe to the spiritual faith which heretofore has 
sustained men's hearts. What is essential and sub- 
stantial in that faith, what is vital and enduring in 
all our thinking and believing, in all our teaching and 
preaching, so that we may still speak to one another 
some honest word of hope and healing? 

Such a sober and searching attitude comes at a 
time when, from other causes, we have been led to look 
into the heart of things rather than upon their sur- 
face. For our age has been an expansive and critical 
one ; the achievements of the nineteenth century im- 
mensely broadened and deepened;' human inquiry in 
every direction; and the twentieth century finds us 
trying to ascertain and utilize the net values of all 
this investigating, revolutionary thinking. As in par- 
liamentary proceedings it often happens that, after 
the consideration of many side issues, with the adop- 
tion or rejection of amendments and counter-amend- 
ments, a point is at length reached where the main 
question is moved and put to vote, so it is in the 
intellectual deliberations of our time : we have discussed 
a thousand incidental or collateral interests, pursuing 
argument and research into every possible ramifica- 
tion; and we are now ready — at least some of us are 
ready — to try to decide, for ourselves at any rate, 
some of the main questions of belief and conduct, leav- 
ing non-essentials where they belong, on one side. In 
other words, after all the centuries of theological de- 
bate and ecclesiastical strife, and especially after the 
last hundred years of scientific and philosophical re- 
search, it would seem as though it ought to be pos- 
sible to sift the discussion down to a few principal 
issues, and with reference to these to find some work- 
ing theory of life that may approve itself at once to 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION 13 

our clearest understanding, our deepest moral instincts, 
our purest affections and our holiest aspirations. Such 
an attainment were surely desirable; and undoubtedly 
there are thousands of earnest people who, weary of 
profitless controversy and likewise of skepticism, yet 
perplexed and bewildered, and often sorrowing and 
yearning, are really hungry for some vital and valid 
message touching the most important things of life, 
whereon they may stay their souls. 

If the present writer may hope to offer any frag- 
ments of so good and great a message, it will only be 
because, after thirty years of service in the pastoral 
ministry of the Christian Church, followed by four 
years of leisure for reading and reflection, in the midst 
of which he was called to drink a deep draught from 
the cup of sorrow, he may claim to express his con- 
victions with serious thoughtfulness, with absolute can- 
dor and with a constructive purpose. He sincerely 
desires to find some fixed stake in all this maddening 
maze of things to which his own spirit may cling, and 
to do what he can to help, his fellowmen to reach a 
similar security. 

Phillips Brooks defined preaching as the communi- 
cation of truth through personality. The personality 
of preacher or teacher is indeed an important factor, 
but it is like the stained-glass window: the blended 
hues of the light which it transmits are produced by 
the vari-colored medium, but the light itself is from 
without; and always we have to remember that the 
sunshine is infinitely greater than the window or the 
soft radiance which it diffuses within. If it is mainly 
our own personal experience that enables us to "speak 
that we do know, and testify that we have seen," we 
must not forget that other men have had other experi- 



14 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

ences, and that the power and beauty of truth and 
goodness and love far, far exceed all that can be com- 
prehended in any single human life. 

These thoughts bring us naturally to a considera- 
tion of the particular question which meets us at the 
threshold of our study: What is the Great Reality 
in Religion? For religion is, in the highest degree, 
both subjective and objective. Our estimate of it is 
formed by our personal experience (or lack of ex- 
perience) of it and by our observation of its mani- 
festations in the world around us and behind us. Al- 
ways it presents these two aspects, and it is easy 
to magnify either of them at the expense of the other. 
Therefore, if we would understand it aright, we must 
look both within and without, and must exercise all 
our powers of intelligent perception, discrimination, 
and appreciation; for it is so large and vital an in- 
terest, and its influence is so manifold and pervasive, 
that we can hardly hope to discern its essential na- 
ture and its deepest import unless we try to contem- 
plate it both sympathetically and critically. 

1. Perhaps it is best to look first within. For it 
is only as we search our own hearts that we can find 
a key to other hearts, only as we read our own inner 
experiences that we can learn the universal language 
which tells the story of common human aspirations. 
Just as reason, love, joy and sorrow in ourselves en- 
able us, and alone can enable us, to understand the 
same things in our fellowmen, so it is in religion: the 
stirrings of the religious impulse in our own souls, 
prompting or restraining us, filling us with awe or 
fear or hope, and leading us to outward acts of de- 
votion or abnegation or high endeavor, interpret to 
us, and alone can interpret to us, the inspirations. 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION 15 

sacrifices, prayers and penances which, along with 
many other expressions, reveal the wonderful religious 
passion that lives in the hearts of all sorts and condi- 
tions of men. 

And surely we have all had some experience of the 
quickening power of the religious spirit in the soul, 
at one time or another, in greater or less degree. We 
may not have understood it, indeed, but we have 
felt it; and feeling, we are learning more and more, 
lies deeper than thought and cannot always be ana- 
lyzed. Perhaps it was a vivid sense of mystery — the 
mystery of the world, the mystery of life, the mystery 
of pain and sorrow and death — that possessed us, even 
overwhelming and appalling us, that made us cry out 
after the Inscrutable Power above and around us, or 
compelled us to bow ourselves in submission and sup- 
plication, or bade us lift up our hearts in reverent 
adoration and trust. Possibly it was a fresh apprehen- 
sion of the sublimity of Nature — the diamond-studded 
dome of heaven at night, the resplendent sky by day, 
the rolling sea, the majestic mountains, the rushing 
power of the cataract, the stillness of the deep woods, 
or the quiet beauty of some pastoral scene — that 
touched us with solemn wonder and longing and praise. 
Or it may have been some mighty human interest — a 
profound social agitation, a national crisis, a great 
reform or a terrible war — that moved and thrilled us 
and carried us out of ourselves, and thus made us 
realize that there is something larger and better than 
ourselves, and led us to invoke a blessing from on high 
upon the cause which engaged our hearts. Or perhaps 
it was some more private, personal, inner struggle — 
some conflict with temptation and sin, some wrestling 
in prayer, some poignant suffering in remorse and 



16 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

grief — that awakened us to an altogether new and 
cleansing and healing realization of the fact that our 
lives are held in the disciplinary embrace of a Moral 
Order to which we must submit, and are shot through 
and through with spiritual forces which we did not 
originate. And yet, very likely, it was just a sweet 
and beautiful insight into the love and goodness and 
gladness of the world, an intuitive perception of an 
indwelling and all-pervading Benevolence, a profound 
consciousness of a Holy Spirit within and without, 
above and around, filling the universe with glory and 
filling our hearts with ineffable peace, — very likely 
it was just this simple, vital, mystical experience which 
made us aware of the Divine Presence and bade us lift 
up our souls in spontaneous gratitude and consecra- 
tion. 

If in any of these ways, to any extent, we have felt 

"The motion of a hidden fire 
That glows within the breast," 

we know at least a little bit of the meaning of religion, 
and are thereby prepared to understand some of its 
workings as we find it among other people. 

%. If, now, we turn to look without, we immediately 
discover that, objectively regarded, religion is a phe- 
nomenon which fills a large place in the life of man- 
kind. 

First of all, we see its manifestations in our sur- 
roundings and among our associates, — in churches, 
synagogues, temples, shrines and altars ; in painting, 
sculpture and music; in assembled congregations and 
in ceremonies of worship, in which we join; in sermons, 
prayers and addresses ; in psalms and hymns and 
spiritual songs ; in sacred writings, in holy days, in 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION 17 

processions and pilgrimages, in various institutions 
and in manifold forms of active benevolence: and as 
we witness all these expressions of the religious spirit 
and share their influence, we find our own religious 
impulses quickened and strengthened, and we perceive 
that religion is really an immense factor in human 
affairs. 

In the second place, as we extend our observation 
or reading, we learn that the world is full of products 
of the religious spirit more or less similar to these; 
that all nations and tribes, in all stages of culture, 
appear to have their religious rites, customs and be- 
liefs ; that there is, indeed, the widest diversity among 
these, so that we may properly speak of religion, not 
as one, but as many, and may, therefore, compare 
one religion with another; and yet that it is quite 
plain that these different religions are, after all, only 
different forms of expression of the one underlying 
religious spirit or impulse that seems to be universal 
and natural. Then when the scholars take us further 
and make a scientific study of all these phenomena, 
as they have been doing for nearly half a hundred 
years now, — gathering an enormous amount of in- 
formation bearing on the subject, testing, sifting and 
interpreting this ; comparing all the principal religions 
of the world, classifying them and tracing them 
through history ; translating the sacred books and the 
inscriptions of the most ancient nations, and collating 
their teachings ; digging and delving among the monu- 
ments of primitive peoples, or patiently studying their 
customs, or even sojourning among savage tribes, — 
enriching our knowledge by their researches and con- 
clusions, we obtain a still larger view of this great 
human interest which we call religion, and are com- 



18 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

pelled to acknowledge that it has always been one of 
the biggest, most vital and most potent forces dis- 
played by our race. The more thoroughly we in- 
vestigate the matter, the more firmly will this judg- 
ment be established. 

But now we wish to ascertain more precisely, if we 
may, the real nature of religion. We want to know, if 
possible, what is essential and what non-essential in 
it, what is permanent and what transient. For cer- 
tainly there is much connected with it that is incidental 
and temporary, much, indeed, that is erroneous and 
baneful. Can we separate the wheat from the chaff, 
the true from the false? 

We must remember that religion, broadly viewed, 
is involved with all the other great interests of life. It 
is not a disconnected, unrelated, insignificant affair, 
although it may sometimes seem so; but is rather an 
integral part of each man's whole mental, moral and 
social status, — sharing in his general personal atti- 
tude and outlook, in his ideas, sentiments, convictions 
and misgivings regarding many things, and in his own 
peculiar struggles, joys and sorrows; sharing, too, 
in the customs and culture of the social group — the 
family, tribe, nation or church — to which he belongs; 
and, among advanced peoples, sharing somehow in that 
indefinable spirit of the age which seems to brood over 
each stage of civilization. Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, the 
eminent American ethnologist, writing about the re- 
ligions of primitive peoples, says: 

"No opinion can be more erroneous than the one 
sometimes advanced that savages are indifferent to 
their faiths. On the contrary, the rule, with very few 
exceptions, is that religion absorbs nearly the whole 
life of a man under primitive conditions. From birth 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION 19 

to death, but especially during adult years, his daily 
actions are governed by ceremonial laws of the severest, 
often the most irksome and painful character. He has 
no independent action or code of conduct, and is a 
very slave to the conditions which such laws create." 

Dr. Brinton approvingly quotes a statement by Pro- 
fessor Granger that "religion in the ancient world 
comprised every social function," and adds: 

"What was true in those ancient days is equally 
so in this age among savage peoples. Let us take as 
an example the Dyaks of Borneo. A recent observer 
describes them as utter slaves to their 'superstitions,' 
that is, to their religion. 'When they lay out their fields, 
gather the harvest, go hunting or fishing, contract a 
marriage, start on an expedition, propose a commercial 
journey, or anything of importance, they always con- 
sult the gods, offer sacrifices, celebrate feasts, study the 
omens, obtain talismans, and so on, often thus losing 
the best opportunity for the business itself.' " * 

These remarks afford a hint of the fact, disclosed 
by any wide study of religious beliefs and practices, 
that jeligion is closely bound up with all the rest of 
the thinking and doing of mankind, according to the 
stage or development which any given individual or 
group or age may have reached. 2 

1 "Religions of Primitive Peoples," by Daniel G. Brinton, A.M., 
LL.D., Sc.D., Putnam's, 1897, pp. 37-39. 

2 If we examine ourselves carefully, we shall find that this is 
true of ourselves; our religion relates itself directly to the total 
culture of the present generation, insofar as we share it, — to our 
degree of material advancement, our education, our science and 
philosophy, our government, our philanthropy, and all our social 
aspirations. Because these interests are so many and great, and 
have been expanding so rapidly, our religious ideas and activities 
are in both a foment and a ferment, a state of unrest and de- 
velopment that is prophetic of something higher and better. If 
life improves, religion will improve; if religion improves, life will 
improve. They are mutually involved. 



20 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

Moreover, we must remember that what may seem 
crude or false or abominable to one person, generation, 
tribe, communion or civilization may seem very sacred 
to another. Until quite recently it was customary 
for even enlightened Christians to call the peoples of 
foreign lands, indiscriminately, "heathen," using the 
word disdainfully or pityingly, and to speak of their 
religious rites and ceremonies as "outlandish heathen- 
isms" or "diabolical superstitions," — indeed, those "re- 
ligions" were actually regarded as the work of the 
Devil and his imps. But the experience of missionaries 
among these various peoples during the past century, 
coupled with the researches of the scholars who have 
been patiently prosecuting the comparative study of 
religions, both ancient and modern, both backward and 
advanced, has taught us to take a larger and more 
sympathetic view; so that we now see that even the 
most childish, grotesque or cruel customs of barbarian 
or savage tribes are to them the consistent expression 
of their religious ideas and aspirations. We may smile 
at the Pueblo Indians who will not plant their corn 
without a religious ceremony, 3 or at the Veddahs of 
Ceylon who "dance their wild nocturnal dance around 
a huge arrow stuck in the ground," worshipping it as 
"the center of their existence" ; 4 we may revolt at the 
horrible mutilations, tortures and human sacrifices 
which were inflicted by the ancient Germans, and were 
more or less common to the early history of "even the 
noblest religions" ; 5 and we of a quiet, thoughtful, 
spiritual faith may turn away with relief from the 
elaborate ritualism of a sacerdotal type of Christian- 

3 Dr. Brinton, work quoted, p. 39. 

4 Prof. George B. Foster, "The Function of Religion," p. 112. 

5 Dr. Brinton, pp. 188, 189. 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION 21 

ity: but we must recognize that all these various forms 
of worship have sprung from some root of sincerity in 
the human soul, and have subsisted by virtue of the 
general state of culture (or lack of culture) in which 
they have found their setting. Conscious deception, 
fraud, chicanery, imposition may have occasionally 
played some small part in the religious history of 
mankind; but this is as nothing in comparison with 
the great spirit of sincerity, whether ignorant or en- 
lightened, which has pervaded all ranks of religious 
society, from the lowest to the highest, either in an- 
cient or in modern times. 

These facts may serve to show that there is no 
single idea, belief, doctrine, ceremony or custom which 
is absolutely universal in religion, or which in itself 
is essential to its nature. To quote again from Dr. 
Brinton: 

"There is no one belief or set of beliefs which con- 
stitutes a religion. We are apt to suppose that every 
creed must teach a belief in a god or gods, in an 
immortal soul, and in a divine government of the world. 
. . . No mistake could be greater. The religion which 
to-day counts the largest number of adherents, Bud- 
dhism, rejects every one of these items. . . . Some 
(religions) believe in souls, but not in gods; while a 
divine government is a thought rarely present in sav- 
age minds. They do not, as a rule, recognize any 
such principle as that of good and evil, or any doctrine 
of rewards and punishment hereafter for conduct in 
the present life. . . . There is, in f act, , not any one 
item in any creed which is accepted by all religions." 6 

In what, then, does the essence of religion consist? 
Let us see whether a few leading definitions of religion 
8 "Religions of Primitive Peoples," pp. 28, 29. 



m MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

may throw any light upon this question. 

Almost the only definition of religion given in the 
Bible is that of St. James, who says: "Pure religion 
and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to 
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and 
to keep himself unspotted from the world." 7 

Other great thinkers have given the following defini- 
tions, as they are collated and quoted by Mr. Benja- 
min Kidd. 8 

"Seneca. — To know God and imitate Him. 

"Kant. — Religion consists in recognizing all our du- 
ties as Divine commands. 

"Matthew Arnold. — Religion is morality touched by 
emotion. 

"Hegel. — The knowledge acquired by the Finite 
Spirit of its essence as an Absolute Spirit. 

"Huxley. — Reverence and love for the Ethical Ideal, 
and the desire to realize that ideal in life. 

"Froude. — A sense of responsibility to the Power 
that made us. 

"Mill. — The essence of Religion is the strong and 
earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards 
an ideal object, recognized as the highest excellence, 
and as rightly paramount over all selfish objects of 
desire. 

"Carlyle. — The thing a man does practically be- 
lieve; the thing a man does practically lay to heart, 
and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to 
this mysterious universe and his duty and destiny 
therein. 

"Dr. Martmeau. — Religion is a belief in an ever- 
lasting God ; that is, a Divine mind and will, ruling the 

T St. James i.27. 

•"Social Evolution," pp. 89, 90. 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION S3 

Universe, and holding moral relations with mankind." 

Farther on Mr. Kidd himself says : "A religion is 
a form of belief, providing an ultra-rational sanction 
for that large class of conduct in the individual where 
his interests and the interests of the social organism 
are antagonistic, and by which the former are rendered 
subordinate to the latter in the general interests of 
the evolution which the race is undergoing." 9 

The Century Dictionary defines religion as "recogni- 
tion of and allegiance in manner of life to a super- 
human power or super-human powers, to whom al- 
legiance and service are regarded as justly due." 

Schleiermacher taught that "religion is neither meta- 
physics nor morality, but arises at the moment that 
we become conscious of a contact between ourselves and 
the universe," this contact being a profound "feeling 
of dependence." 

Max Mueller in his "Hibbert Lectures" defined re- 
ligion as "a mental faculty which independent of, nay, 
in spite of sense and reason, enables man to appre- 
hend the infinite under different names and under vary- 
ing disguises" ; and he said, "We can hear in all re- 
ligions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive 
the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing 
after the Infinite, a love of God." 10 

Finally, Professor Jastrow himself concludes a valu- 
able study of the subject by saying that "religion may 
be defined as the natural belief in a Power or Powers 
beyond our control, and upon whom we feel ourselves 
dependent; which belief and feeling of dependence 
prompt (1) to organization, (2) to specific acts, and 

9 "Social Evolution," p. 103. 

"Quoted bv Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jun., in "The Study of 
Religion" (19*01), p. 163. 



24 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

(3) to the regulation of conduct, with a view to estab- 
lishing favorable relations between ourselves and the 
Power or Powers in question." - 11 

Perhaps these various definitions do not greatly help 
us — mere definitions of any matter seldom do ; but they 
may serve to bring out a little more clearly the truth 
which has been slowly emerging all along, namely : that 
the nature of religion is to be sought, not in external 
forms, but in the inner workings of the human mind; 
and that its essence consists in an instinctive feeling 
after the Divine, an instinctive apprehension of the Di- 
vine, an instinctive hunger for the Divine, an instinc- 
tive tendency to postulate a Deity. The religiousness 
of man is universal; the investigations of the scholars 
may be said to have established this fact beyond perad- 
venture. 12 But the fact of such universality is the 
most conclusive proof imaginable that religion is per- 
fectly natural to man. This means that all religions 
spring from the same root in the human soul ; that this 
root is an inalienable instinct implanted in man, not by 
any second birth, but by his original birth as a spiritual 
being; and that this instinct is one of the strongest im- 
pulses or forces that have animated the race, control- 
ling conduct in all ages as few other influences have 
been able to do. Let a final quotation from Dr. Brin- 
ton confirm this truth, — "The religiosity of man is a 
part of his psychical being. In the nature and laws 
of the human mind, in its intellect, sympathies, emo- 
tions, and passions, lie the well-springs of all religions, 
modern or ancient, Christian or heathen. To these we 

11 Work cited, pp. 171, 172. 

12 Dr. Brinton: "The fact is that there has not been a single 
tribe, no matter how rude, known in history or visited by travelers, 
which has been shown to be destitute of religion, under some 
form." Work cited, p. 30; also p. 33. 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION. 25 

must refer, by these we must explain, whatever errors, 
falsehoods, bigotry or cruelty have stained man's creeds 
and cults ; to them we must credit whatever truth, 
beauty, piety, and love have hallowed and glorified his 
long search for the perfect and the eternal." 13 

Here, then, we find the central, essential, substantial 
fact or truth which we have been seeking. The great 
reality in religion is the universality, naturalness and 
permanence of the religious instinct or impulse in the 
human soul. In one word we may call it aspiration; 
or it may be called hunger, the hunger of the soul for 
God, — as natural and, in its way, as potent as the hun- 
ger of the body for food, or the hunger of the mind for 
truth, or the hunger of the heart for love. Back of 
all rites and ceremonies and institutions, beneath all 
crudities and errors, within all refinements of culture 
there exists and persists this native tendency of the 
human spirit to conceive the Divine and to seek some 
sort of relation thereto or communion therewith. All 
outward forms of expression may change, but this in- 
ner impulse abides, with whatever of indestructibility 
and promise the personality of such a being as man is 
may itself possess. 

Whence came this religious instinct, this hungering 
and groping after the Divine, we can no more tell than 
we can tell the ultimate origin of human nature. Biol- 
ogy, psychology and philosophy may throw light upon 
the manner of its development, but these partial, tenta- 
tive explanations serve quite as much to deepen as to 
remove the mystery of our being, — the mystery, won- 
der and glory of human life in what we may perhaps 
call, more justifiably now than ever before, a living 
universe. We know at least that we are here; we are 
13 "Religions of Primitive Peoples," pp. 29, 30. 



26 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

conscious of our spiritual aptitudes ; and, so far as we 
can see, our religious instinct is as natural as our 
power of thought, our moral sense or our affectionate 
disposition. Thus religion becomes a great, spiritual 
dynamic in our human world, — as real and, within its 
own sphere, as effective as the force we call gravity in 
the material realm ; indeed it might not be inapt to call 
religion a kind of spiritual gravitation, binding the 
finite soul of man to the Infinite Soul of the universe 
as a planet is bound to its central sun. 

Now from this point of view, looking out upon the 
religious life of mankind, which is as variegated as the 
flora and fauna of different climes, and trying to in- 
terpret it all in the light of what is deepest, purest and 
highest in ourselves, we may note a few profoundly en- 
couraging facts. 

1. We see the remarkable power and fruitfulness of 
the religious instinct. It moves individuals, classes and 
masses; it sways the most backward peoples and the 
most advanced, savage tribes and civilized communities ; 
it prompts to acts of devotion and sacrifice that spring 
out of fear or credulity as well as out of reverence, 
gratitude and love; it inspires deeds of fanaticism and 
deeds of heroism ; it sends men on pilgrimages and into 
wars; it enlists them in hateful persecutions and in 
splendid philanthropies ; it even leads, as it led in New 
England, to the founding of States and may be the 
principal factor in shaping their development. What 
shrines it has established, what altars it has raised, 
what monuments it has reared, what temples it has 
erected, what magnificent cathedrals it has builded 
against the sky, to bear witness to man's haunting sense 
of the unseen and the eternal ! What sacred literatures 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION W 

it has produced, what beautiful painting and sculpture 
and music, as its holy spirit has touched with creative 
influence the genius of earth's most gifted sons ! Above 
all, how many sweet, strong, saintly human lives it has 
fashioned, sustaining and guiding them through the 
trials of this world, making them conscious of the Di- 
vine Presence and Power as neither learning nor art 
could do, and sending them hence with their spirits 
radiant with the light of immortal faith, hope and love ! 
What other force in our human sphere has been one- 
half so potent and fruitful? 

We must guard against limiting our estimate of the 
power and scope of religion by our own personal ex- 
perience. We ourselves may not have felt very greatly 
its quickening influence; we ourselves may never have 
drunk very deeply from the well-springs of spirituality : 
but this is no adequate reason for denying that other 
men, with different thoughts and struggles and rela- 
tionships, have seen and felt and proved many things 
which we have never learned. When one reads a vol- 
ume like the late Professor William James's, "The Va- 
rieties of Religious Experience," or books like Harold 
Begbie's "Twice Born Men," etc., or studies the life- 
work of such a man as the late General William Booth, 
the founder of the Salvation Army, or peruses the 
confessional literature of saints and mystics, one quickly 
perceives that there have been hosts of people in whom 
religion has been the one all-dominating force, the one 
profound, vital and enriching experience, the one open 
way to an absolute victory of the soul in a world of 
tumult and conflict. The attainments of such people 
bear witness to spiritual realities of which the rest of 
us only obtain occasional glimpses, and may well remind 
us that "there are more things in heaven and earth than 



88 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

are dreamed of in" any man's "philosophy." 

2. We see the inner or underlying unity, amid all 
diversities, of the religious spirit of the race. Super- 
ficially, indeed, nothing seems to divide men more 
sharply than do their differences in matters of religion ; 
and yet these relate chiefly to externalities, — to doc- 
trines, creeds, rites, ceremonies, institutions, forms of 
organization, methods of work, social customs, habits, 
etc., etc. ; and beneath all such there is a common hu- 
man heart-hunger, a yearning, an aspiration, a sense 
of need, together with the hope of its divine satisfaction, 
which makes the whole world kin. It was a word of 
deep insight which St. Paul spoke to the men of Athens 
when he declared unto them the invisible God whom 
they had unwittingly worshiped, and said that He had 
"made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the 
face of the earth, having determined their appointed 
seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they 
should seek God, if haply they might feel after him 
and find him." If there is "one God and Father of all, 
who is over all and through all and in all," the spiritual 
unity of the human race is its most vital and profound 
unity; and the fact that we are understanding this 
better to-day than ever before, more scientifically and 
also more sympathetically, affords the highest ground 
of hope — one might almost say the only ground of hope 
— for a growing sense of universal human brotherhood. 
If in the immediate future our own form of religion 
can help mankind to realize a larger measure of this 
"unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," and can thus 
promote the further growth of this sense of universal 
brotherhood, it will prove anew its power to mold life 
and to serve effectually the highest interests of the race. 

3, We see, moreover, the evolutionary progress of 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION 29 

religion through the ages, and learn to judge of its 
various forms or types or products in the light of the 
stages of culture to which they belong. Since the idea 
of development has entered into modern thought so 
fully as to reconstruct the entire reading of human his- 
tory, we have been learning that the principle applies 
to spiritual things as well as to physical. Hence we 
now conceive that religion itself is a phase of man's 
development, although it is impossible to tell at what 
point it first appears along the upward pathway on 
which he has slowly climbed from the orders of life 
below him. If we bear in mind that development in 
this, as in other respects, is not all one way, — that there 
are often lapses, declines, retrogressions ; in other words, 
that there is such a thing as degeneration in the spir- 
itual as well as the physical life of man, — if we take 
due account of this fact, and so correct our easy gen- 
eralizations, we may still properly say that, viewed 
as a whole, religion has undergone a vast development 
in passing from its lowest to its highest stages. In- 
stantly, however, we must remind ourselves that there 
are still in existence, among the different tribes and 
races, all the various degrees of advancement, from the 
crudest to the most refined, which we suppose to have 
been covered in the case of any given highly-developed 
type of religion. So there is no single universal re- 
ligion yet; whether any extant religion is capable of 
becoming universal is another question. 14 

"Dr. George Galloway in his recent volume in the International 
Theological Library series, entitled "The Philosophy of Religion" 
(Scribner's, 1914), points out that there have been three main 
stages in the development of religion, so far as we know enough 
about it historically to judge. "The first and earliest known to us 
is Spiritism, the primitive form of belief out of which all higher 
religion has grown. Then follows Polytheism, the religion of the 
nation in contrast to the tribe: a stage of religion which was 



30 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

Now while it is evident that any particular type of 
religion can be fairly judged only in the light of the 
conditions under which it appears, the state of back- 
wardness or advancement in culture which forms its 
matrix, so to speak, we must remember that the true 
nature of essential religion is to be found upon its 
highest levels rather than upon its lowest. It is a 
mistake to suppose that we shall best understand the 
real character of religion by observing it, or reading 
about it as others have observed it, among savages or 
semi-civilized peoples. Not so do we judge of art or 
science or family life or human government. A tree 
is known by its fruits rather than by its roots. If 
we want to understand the full meaning of religion, 
its most vital power and its greatest blessedness, let 
us seek it among the noblest and wisest, the sanest and 
purest men and women. Other things, indeed, will have 
helped to make them noble and wise, sane and pure; 
but when religion is developed and refined to such a 
degree of spiritual perfection as to blend with all these 
other influences and to find a fit abode in such worthy 
souls, — yea, even to be, itself, the principal factor in 
making them what they have become, — we may see 

reached on the formation of the larger national States some time 
before the clear light of history. Finally comes Monotheism, a 
spiritual faith which goes beyond the limits of the nation, and, in 
its Christian form, out of the dissolution of the national States 
of the old world has become a Universal Religion. . . . These 
three stages of religion mark an ascending scale of life, and 
therefore of human needs and of the objects which satisfy these 
needs. A gradual purification and refinement of religious values 
are visible. The development is from the sensuous to the spiritual, 
from the desire of outward things to the consciousness that the 
highest goods are the goods of the soul. Hence, underlying the 
evolution of religion and working through it, is the growth of 
self-consciousness, the personal development of man." — Pp. 242, 
243. 



GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION 31 

most clearly its true nature and worth. 

In the light of this thought it is gratifying and in- 
spiring to know that religion among ourselves is at 
present rising to a higher level. It is steadily purify- 
ing itself from superstitions and errors in thought; 
it is becoming more enlightened, nor yet less reverent; 
it is becoming infused with the ethical and philanthropic 
spirit, so that a veritable passion for social betterment 
is everywhere possessing it ; and it is reaching out to 
the uttermost ends of the earth, and to the lowliest and 
neediest of all lands, with its proffer of truth and 
love ; yea, it even embraces in the scope of its faith and 
hope and promise of redemption the whole family of 
mankind "in heaven and on earth." In other words, 
religion in our time is coming to be rationalized, moral- 
ized, spiritualized and vitalized; and thereby it holds 
out the promise and potency of a better life for our 
world, to be slowly but surely won in the ages to come. 

4. Finally, we may be perfectly confident that the 
future will have its religion. It may not be exactly 
like any type of religion which has prevailed in the 
past; but the instinct will not die out of the human 
heart which prompts man to aspire and yearn, which 
makes him feel the solemn mystery and wonder of ex- 
istence, which creates within him a hunger for truth 
and goodness and love and holiness, and which impels 
him to seek some sort of communion with the Unseen 
Power that enfolds and interpenetrates his own life and 
that he has learned to call the Living God. Ideas and 
doctrines may change, as learning and experience may 
modify them; so may rites and ceremonies, social cus- 
toms and institutions : but the inner, underlying spirit 
which makes us all at least dimly aware that we have 
spiritual aptitudes and sustain spiritual relations, and 



32 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

thus awakens within us a feeble or a vivid consciousness 
of our kinship with the Eternal Spirit — "the Spirit 
itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are chil- 
dren of God," 15 — this is as imperishable as the human 
personality of which it is a part. 

"I think man's soul dwells nearer to the east, 
Nearer to morning's fountains than the sun; 
Herself the source whence all tradition sprang, 
Herself at once both labyrinth and clew. 
The miracle fades out of history, 
But faith and wonder and the primal earth 
Are born into the world with every child." 18 

"Rom. viii:16. 
"Lowell, The Cathedral. 



II 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH f 

OUR study thus far has shown that religion in 
its vital, essence is instinctive, universal and 
very potent in the life of mankind ; that there- 
fore we may rightly hold it to be as natural as love or 
reason or the moral apprehension; and that it thus 
becomes a living dynamic, as real and significant in the 
spiritual realm as is gravity or electricity in the ma- 
terial. 

If these conclusions are thoroughly tenable, they 
carry a couple of corollaries which deserve a moment's 
attention. 

1. The basis of all religious inquiry must be human 
nature. Formerly it was customary to begin a discus- 
sion of religious matters by considering the teachings 
of the Bible and the attributes of God. But of course 
this method of reasoning assumes the existence of God 
and the truthfulness, somehow, of the teachings of the 
Bible; whereas we no longer think it warrantable to 
take these important postulates for granted, but must 
first find support for them in the depths of human na- 
ture, the one field which yields us our most immediate 
and sure knowledge. Indeed it is our thought that 
man himself is the chief revelation of whatever spiritual 
significance the universe affords ; humanity is the prin- 
cipal interpreter of Deity ; out of the profound experi- 
ences of human life all sacred scriptures are born, how- 

33 



34 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

ever inspired by the over-brooding and indwelling Spirit. 
Hence the care and thoroughness with which we must 
ever prosecute the study of human nature, and the 
reverence with which we should listen to every mes- 
sage that comes from the inmost recesses of man's 
soul. 

%. We must always distinguish between religion and 
its manifold products. Religion itself is simply the 
instinctive attitude of the soul which impels to wor- 
ship, consists essentially of aspiration, apprehends or 
suggests the Divine, and, in its higher stages, yearns 
for communion with the living God; while its products 
are the various forms in which it expresses itself, — 
rites, ceremonies, postures, penances, prayers, pilgrim- 
ages, altars, shrines, temples and creeds. These differ 
in different countries, ages and degrees of culture; but 
the underlying spirit common to them all is ever the 
same. 

This distinction will lead us to separate sharply be- 
tween religion and theology, which is merely thoughts 
about religion. Religion is the spiritual life of the 
soul; while theology is the intellectual theory of that 
life, its philosophical explanation, the orderly account 
of its relation to God and of God's government of 
the world. Of course there is a certain close connection 
between the two, especially among intelligent people; 
for it is inevitable that a rational being should reflect 
somewhat upon his emotions, desires and struggles, and 
thus come to intellectual theories or conclusions regard- 
ing them. Yet it is possible for religion to subsist and 
to be very pure, strong and fruitful without any formal 
theology at all, — just as it is possible for a man to 
be morally upright without having thought out any 
particular theory of ethics; or to love his wife and 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 35 

children deeply and tenderly without ever dreaming of 
any such scientific account of the evolution of human 
affection as Henry Drummond gives in his "Ascent of 
Man." The fact is that throughout the most of Chris- 
tian history, especially since the days of Medieval 
Scholasticism, and still more especially — in Protestant 
circles — since the rise of Calvinism and the reactions 
against it, the theological note has been so strong as 
to dominate the more vital, spiritual interests of re- 
ligion ; whence it has come to pass that multitudes 
have identified religion with theology, — a true, pure, 
reverent, aspiring spirit in the heart with a supposedly 
correct intellectual conception or philosophy of the 
Divine nature and procedure; whence, unfortunately, 
it has still further transpired that, when a given 
theological system — like Calvinism — has broken down, 
people have inferred that religion was ruined. All 
such mistakes may be avoided by remembering that 
religion in its primary essence is an instinctive hunger 
for God, while theology is merely an intellectual theory 
about God. Hence it follows that real, spiritual re- 
ligion may be nourished in the souls of the people even 
though all our established intellectual formularies go 
to pieces. 

Now we come to inquire as to the nature, function 
and scope of faith, a term which has always occupied 
a large place in Christian phraseology. Just what is 
faith, and what has it to do with religion, and how 
may the noblest faith be gained? A sound answer to 
these questions will go a long way toward simplifying 
some of our most perplexing religious problems. 

The word faith is synonymous with the word belief, 
the one coming to us from the Latin and the other 



86 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

from the Anglo-Saxon. Each denotes primarily the 
assent of the mind to a proposition, statement or 
thought which it has not absolutely demonstrated. 
Such assent may be the conclusion of definite processes 
of reasoning, every step of which may be traced; or 
it may be partly this and partly also the result of 
feelings, tendencies and vague intimations that are not 
entirely susceptible of being logically formulated. 
In any case one's faith or belief must rest upon some 
evidence and involve judgment; else it is mere credulity, 
which is the foundation of superstition and fanaticism: 
and the higher the order of mind that entertains it — 
or perhaps it were better to say the more logical that 
order — the more nearly perfect will be its action in 
accordance with the evidence. A trained, experienced 
and honorable jurist becomes almost a machine for 
weighing evidence and turning out decisions in har- 
mony therewith; but the vast majority of people are 
so little disciplined in this respect that their beliefs 
are largely a jumble of a few reasons and many 
prejudices, involving all sorts of piques, crotchets and 
guesses ; indeed it may be said that popular beliefs 
generally — touching the weather, the war, politics, re- 
ligion, what not — consist mainly of mere floating ideas 
or sayings, current at the time, absorbed from sur- 
roundings, or inherited from the past, near or re- 
mote. 

It is clear, then, that faith or belief may be of every 
conceivable degree of strength or weakness. You 
believe the sun will rise to-morrow morning — or will 
appear to do so — and nothing could shake your con- 
fidence ; you would risk your life upon it without hesi- 
tation. But you may believe that we are going to have 
a fruitful summer or a severe winter; yet how much 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 37 

would you risk upon that proposition? You believe 
that your partner in business, whom you have known 
intimately for many years, is strictly reliable, and 
nothing short of overwhelming proof would change your 
mind; but the plausible stranger who comes to solicit 
your investment in a gold mine cannot command any 
such confidence. The fact is, we use the word faith 
or the word belief to cover every shade of conviction 
of which the mind may be conscious, from the feeblest 
to the strongest; and each particular form or instance 
of faith or belief must stand upon its own basis, 
whether the reasons for it can be fully stated or not. 
We may believe with the utmost assurance that Jesus 
Christ lived in Palestine, nineteen hundred years ago, 
and was an exalted Teacher of spiritual truth, because 
the evidence is sufficient to produce such a conviction 
in our minds. But we may seriously doubt whether he 
actually walked upon the sea, or turned water into 
wine, or raised the dead, simply because the evidence 
for these alleged occurrences is not adequate, in the 
face of the established order of Nature, to completely 
convince us of them. Each case, each item or article 
in a man's faith, must rest upon its own evidential 
ground, must stand or fall by itself mainly. 

But religious faith, in which we are especially in- 
terested, is, when genuine and powerful, something 
more than a surface opinion. It reaches into the 
depths of a man's soul, or it springs out of his deepest 
experiences, and it subsists not only by virtue of rea- 
sons but also by virtue of emotions or insights or ap- 
prehensions which cannot be set forth in logical array. 
In other words, life is more than logic, more than in- 
tellect; and faith, religious faith peculiarly, is an 
expression of life, an attitude of one's whole being. 



38 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

Just as the psychologists are teaching us that a large 
part of our mentality lies below or beyond the com- 
paratively narrow field of our immediate and clear 
consciousness, and that a great deal of our real life 
goes on in this so-called subliminal or subconscious or 
extra-conscious realm — the realm which still holds our 
half-forgotten knowledge, and keeps faithful record of 
many of our wholly forgotten deeds ; — so it may be 
said that the forces which contribute to a man's pro- 
found spiritual faith lie out of sight, under ground, 
like the roots of a flowering and fruitful plant; and 
he may never be able to explain his faith entirely by 
giving precise answers to categorical questions. If a 
good man were asked why he believes in his good wife, 
in her purity, honesty, unselfishness and love, he would 
not be able to tell why with absolute exactness and 
completeness : he believes in her because he knows her 
and loves her, indeed, but also because of a subtle 
union subsisting between them which is as indefinable 
or inexplicable as it is indissoluble — it is a thing of 
life and not of theory. So, too, a man's religious faith, 
when vital and potent, is derived from sources other 
and deeper than the processes of measuring and weigh- 
ing evidence, however largely these must figure in its 
formulation; it is a thing of life and not of theory 
only. More will be said later regarding this truth. 

Now the office of faith is to take the place of knowl- 
edge where knowledge is not possible, especially in 
the interest of action. 

Strictly speaking, the term knowledge is of very 
limited import : it applies only to those things of which 
we are positively certain; and these are of two classes, 
— the things outside of us which we apprehend by 
sense-perception, and the things which transpire in 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 39 

the mind itself, of which we are conscious, namely : our 
thoughts, feelings, purposes, mental perceptions, con- 
victions, aspirations, hopes. Of the former, the things 
without of which our senses tell us, how little we posi- 
tively know! We see the moon, for instance : but what 
does the mere sight of that bright orb reveal to us that 
we can call sure knowledge? Only its brightness and 
roundness and changing phases. We walk through 
the fields and see the flowers, or through the woods 
and note a variety of trees, or through the mountains 
and valleys and observe different kinds of rock: but 
unless we are botanists or horticulturists or geolo- 
gists, how slight is the certain knowledge of those ob- 
jects which we thus obtain! Even when we examine 
our states of consciousness, our thoughts, feelings, 
convictions, desires and purposes, we find them con- 
tinually changing; and our knowledge of ourselves 
arising from within ourselves, and considered without 
relation to others, is exceedingly small. 

It is obvious, then, that the term knowledge must 
be enlarged to include a vast amount of information 
that comes to each of us second hand, and in fact we 
constantly employ it in this way. When we speak of 
modern knowledge in general, or of any particular 
branch of it, like one of the sciences, we allude to an 
enormous body of fact and truth which the learning 
of the ages, especially of recent times, has built up. 
Only the merest fragment of this is actually possessed 
by any single mind; and with most people half the 
things that are learned in youth are forgotten by 
middle life. But what we mean is that this great 
and precious body of knowledge has been wrought out, 
shaped and tested ; that it exists in books and libraries 
and museums ; that it is available to those who are 



40 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

qualified to appropriate it; and that in this sense 
it is common property, the most valuable property 
of the world, some of whose main features are more 
or less familiar to hosts of intelligent people. Yet no 
one knows so well as the profound scholar that even 
the most complete science of our time is to a con- 
siderable extent hypothetical; that its conclusions are 
subject to revision and re-revision; and that our age, 
with all its accumulated riches of learning, has only 
entered the vestibule of the wonderful temple of pos- 
sible knowledge. 

Now into all this enlarged conception of knowledge 
the element of faith or belief enters to a great extent. 
It comes to us mostly from others and we take it upon 
trust. All our information concerning those parts 
of the world which we have never seen, practically all 
our historical knowledge, and nine-tenths of all our 
science — astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, 
medicine, and what not — we receive upon the testimony 
of our fellow men; and we believe it and rest in it 
and act upon it because we have confidence that they 
know what they are talking about. We have never 
seen the city of Babylon — indeed ancient Babylon van- 
ished long ago ; and we have never read the original 
Code of Hammurabi — indeed we probably could not 
read it if we had it before us ; yet we go on teaching 
one another about the place of Babylon in history, and 
about the significance of that remarkable Code of 
Hammurabi. Why? Because we believe that the evi- 
dence concerning the city and the Code has been suffi- 
cient to produce convictions amounting to practical 
certainty in minds competent to judge of it. In other 
words, "we walk by faith, not by sight," in these his- 
torical matters. We take the testimony of others upon 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 41 

trust, and they of still others, and the whole process 
reduces itself to one of confidence in the competence 
of somebody to weigh evidence and establish either 
absolute proof or the highest degree of probability. 
The same thing is true of nearly all our science. The 
scholar in physics tells us about the ether that fills 
every nook and corner and cranny of the universe, 
even permeating the most solid bodies of matter; and 
we believe in its existence because we believe in him, or 
in some other scholar who has demonstrated the theory 
of its existence ; and yet this theory is only a working 
hypothesis, which the scientist adopts because it most 
completely solves the problems involved, and which 
therefore has for him so high a degree of probability 
as to amount to practical certainty. The history of 
science is the record of continual discovery, hypo- 
thetical explanation, verification or correction, re- 
statement, and ever-enlarging horizons ; and at every 
step one mystery merely gives place to a greater 
mystery. 

But if such is the character of our historical and 
scientific knowledge, much more is it the character of 
our practical judgments in the conduct of every-day 
affairs. We "know not what shall be on the morrow" : 
yet we marry and give in marriage, we journey abroad, 
we engage in business, we make investments, we plan 
for the future, we take risks of every sort, in sheer 
faith, i. e. y in our belief that we shall live and be in 
health, that safety and prosperity will attend us, that 
our fellow men can be depended upon, and that the 
good order of the world will hold together; but every 
one of these things is uncertain. We do not know and 
we cannot know what the immediate future has in store 
for us, and much less the remote future: yet we fare 



42 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

on bravely and cheerfully, trying to know as much as 
possible, forming judgments, weighing evidence, esti- 
mating probabilities, and "believing where we cannot 
prove"; and most of us achieve a reasonable degree 
of success, and find our faith on the whole justified by 
results. Not always, alas ! is it so justified. The pas- 
sengers who embarked on the ill-fated Titanic un- 
doubtedly did so in faith that they would have a safe 
voyage; but unfortunately it proved otherwise. Yet 
millions of travelers do cross the ocean safely, and 
plan their journeys without much fear in spite of all 
such terrible disasters ; indeed we all go about our daily 
work, and shape our lives, and meet the inevitable un- 
certainties, "in faith believing," notwithstanding acci- 
dents, failures, miscalculations and miscarriages. Only 
so can we live at all in such a world as this, in which 
we cannot know the future, but in which we must "walk 
by faith, not by sight." We dwell, each of us, as 
regards both intellectual and practical matters, within 
a small sphere of clear intelligence, lighted up by a 
little bit of positive knowledge, like a house illuminated 
at night; but outside is the darkness of a vast igno- 
rance and uncertainty, a realm of mystery that seems 
to deepen as life expands. Into this darkness we are 
all striving to project the rays of our search-lights a 
little farther, each day, each year, each generation; 
but the things we believe must ever outnumber the 
things we absolutely know a hundred to one, while 
perhaps the things to be awaited must outnumber them 
both still more largely. 

"O world, thou choosest not the better part! 
It is not wisdom to be only wise, 
And on the inward vision close the eyes, 

But it is wisdom to believe the heart. 

Columbus found a world, and had no chart, 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 43 

Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; 

To trust the soul's invincible surmise 
Was all his science and his only art. 
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine 

That lights the pathway but one step ahead, 

Across a void of mystery and dread. 
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine, 

By which alone the mortal heart is led 
Unto the thinking of the thought divine." 

George Santayana. 

From all this it appears that faith, taking the place 
of knowledge where knowledge is not possible, is a 
rational attitude of mind. We are not unreasonable 
beings because we believe some things which cannot be 
proved, because we act upon convictions when exact 
demonstrations are out of the question. We are built 
for action, as an automobile is built for running; it is 
in action mainly that we develop our powers, and 
grow, and fill a place of usefulness in the world; and 
it is certain that the greater part of our activity in 
life, which naturally looks forward, is based upon 
opinions, convictions and judgments which are not sus- 
ceptible of positive proof. The whole business world 
subsists in confidence between man and man, in faith 
in the stability and productiveness of Nature ; and 
governments are established, laws enacted, treaties 
made, and even wars conducted in the belief that cer- 
tain ends are attainable and justifiable, and that cer- 
tain measures will prove effective. In all this men are 
neither fools nor rascals nor bigots, but reasonable 
beings ; for well-grounded faith is not only a rational 
but a necessary principle in the management of the 
entire domain of practical, every-day life. 

If, then, we ask what faith has to do with religion, 
the answer is plain: Faith is a working principle, 
which has reference mainly to action, and which is as 



44 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

valid in one realm as in another. If it is competent 
to determine an attitude or a course of conduct in 
matters of learning and business and all our ordinary 
social relationships, it is not to be ruled out of court 
when it comes to testify in behalf of spiritual interests. 
It is all a question of the nature of the evidence, and 
of sound reasoning, and of thorough thinking and test- 
ing, and of intellectual and moral integrity, and of 
candor and open-mindedness. The normal action of 
the human mind simply renders it inevitable that it 
should trust its own faculties, and trust the testimony 
of other minds, and trust the continuity of Nature's 
order; and whether it be in the sphere of moral and 
religious concerns or in that of material or so called 
"practical" affairs, it is perfectly reasonable in so 
doing. This faith becomes effective for conduct, taking 
the place of knowledge where positive knowledge is 
not possible, and so fulfills its great function. In the 
words of William James, "Faith means belief in some- 
thing concerning which doubt is still theoretically 
possible; and as the test of belief is willingness to 
act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in 
a cause, the prosperous issue of which is not certified 
to us in advance." 17 

If these remarks are just, they fairly dispose of the 
notion, somewhat prevalent and sometimes cynically 
expressed, that religious faith consists of blind belief, 
whereas science consists of absolute knowledge. Real be- 
lief always rests upon reasons of some sort, and "blind 
belief" is no belief at all, but mere credulity. The so- 
called "ages of faith" were largely ages of credulity, 
superstition, and unquestioning docility; but the ages 
of true faith, supported by learning and reason, and 
17 "Meaning of Truth," p. 256, quoted by Prof. R. B. Perry. 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 45 

guided by intelligent, fearless investigation, are only 
even now broadly opening. We are not to throw the 
principle of faith overboard, but to understand its 
proper scope, and use it legitimately, whether in reli- 
gious inquiry, or in scientific research, or in practical 
conduct. 

We are now prepared to appreciate the power and 
helpfulness of real faith. It sustains men's flagging 
spirits, it nerves to effort, and how often it vindicates 
itself as a dynamic factor in human enterprise! The 
people who try to do things are the people who believe 
that things can be done. Recall Columbus and his dis- 
covery of America, — how he believed the earth to be 
round, and set out to sail around it, when nearly all 
Europe thought him a poor, deluded mortal: his 
achievement was as much an act of faith as any in 
history. Recall Cyrus W. Field and his success, after 
repeated failures and the loss of large wealth, in laying 
the Atlantic cable. Think of Lieutenant Peary and 
his final triumph in reaching the North Pole. Think 
of the founders of our Republic and of their belief in 
the principles for which they toiled and suffered. 
Think of Saint Paul and how his whole apostolic career 
was inspired by faith. Think of our modern Christian 
missionaries, from Adoniram Judson to the hosts that 
to-day are rearing the standard of the Cross in a thou- 
sand foreign places. Think of our technical engineers 
— civil, mechanical, mining, sanitary — who build mar- 
velous bridges, bore tunnels through mountains and 
under rivers, dig canals like Suez and Panama, swing 
railroads over chasms or around dizzy heights, con- 
struct enormous reservoirs and redeem arid wastes, 
conquer plague and disease by cleansing the earth, and 



46 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

so help to make this old world into a new paradise. 
All these and myriads of others have been people of 
action because they have been people of both knowl- 
edge and faith ; they have based their faith upon their 
knowledge, and have thus believed that things could 
be done, and therefore have attempted and achieved. 
Always it has been action, action, action which knowl- 
edge and faith have served; and both knowledge and 
faith have found their sufficient recompense in endeavor 
and accomplishment. Intelligent faith inspires to 
effort, while doubt freezes the soul and paralyzes the 
arm. Men who do not believe do not achieve. 

But it must be said that religious faith has a quality 
peculiarly its own and yields a blessing peculiarly rich. 
This is because religion is so largely an affair of the 
inner life. Its springs are within, even though its 
activities be outward. It consists primarily and mainly 
in an attitude of the soul, — in ideas, thoughts, desires, 
convictions, aspirations, hopes, purposes and endeavors 
that are considered profoundly vital and sacred. Thus 
it subsists among interests which are less tangible, 
perhaps, than those of science and business and engi- 
neering; at any rate they cannot be weighed and 
measured and appraised by the same standards; but 
they are not, therefore, any the less real or important 
— they are simply different. Being essentially spirit- 
ual, religion has regard mainly to spiritual influences ; 
it listens for the inner voice, it heeds the inner man- 
date, it seeks ever the inner satisfactions — "the peace 
of God which passeth all understanding." Its life is 
a holy life, whose experiences are not always reducible 
to rule and regulation and explanation ; and it has in- 
sights, intimations, promptings, restraints, joys, sor- 
rows, guidances which come we know not how, — which 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 47 

come, we may believe, because the finite spirit, man, 
sustains living relations to the Infinite Spirit, God. 
"There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the 
Almighty giveth him understanding," said young 
Elihu in his answer to the three friends of Job. This 
"inspiration" is often the secret and chief source of 
the real faith that lives, quietly but potently, within a 
man's soul and shapes his outward conduct. Probably 
of no other kind of faith than religious faith can this 
be said. It is peculiarly inward and vital and sacred 
because such is the very nature of spiritual religion; 
and therefore it has ranges of apprehension which the 
intellectual processes of reasoning may not, alone, com- 
pletely gauge. Saint Paul uttered a profound truth 
when he said, "The physical man receiveth not the 
things of the spirit of God; for they are foolishness 
unto him: neither can he know them; for they are 
spiritually discerned." As one who has not an ear 
for music may not know the delights of music, or as 
one who has no eye for beauty may not have the judg- 
ment and the joy of the artist; so one who has not 
an awakened or a cultivated spiritual sense may not 
know the meaning of the inner light, the inner voice, 
the inner peace, — "the peace of God which passeth 
all understanding." 

But a man who has attained to some measure of 
such spiritual discernment derives a great blessing from 
his religious faith. He is "sustained and soothed by 
an unfaltering trust" when there is no other power 
to give him courage to try to go on, or to bear up, 
or to accept what the day brings. He is prompted, 
restrained and led by his inner faith-sense when there 
is no other guidance for him. The writer of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews says : "By faith Abraham, when he 



48 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

was called to go out into a place which he should after 
receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, 
not knowing whither he went." 18 How often do men 
go and come, hither and thither, on this enterprise or 
that, without being able to tell precisely why except 
that they have a secret, inner, indefinable belief that 
they ought, or ought not, to do so and so! It is the 
faith-sense which belongs to the spiritually-sensitized 
soul; and it is sometimes the most unerring guidance 
which a mortal man can have through the mazes of 
life's bewildering situations. And there is inspiration 
in genuine faith, the inspiration of spiritual life and 
power, which heals the infirmities of the soul and, as 
we are learning anew in these days, may go far toward 
the healing of the body. For life is always the great 
builder, and real faith is a form or attitude of life, 
even the highest life that we know; and who can limit 
the extent to which its influence may filter down into 
the lower life? Then what courage is imparted to the 
minds and hearts of ordinary people when, in times of 
trial or danger, a strong man stands up amongst them 
and speaks words of confidence and wisdom! Was it 
not James A. Garfield, who, on the evening following 
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, addressed from 
a balcony in New York City an excited multitude in 
the street, and began by saying: "Fellow-citizens, God 
reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives" ; 
when instantly a tide of comfort and hope and calm- 
ness poured itself into the souls of those sorrowing, 
anxious men and women? What is the orator without 
faith, whether he be statesman or preacher? What, 
indeed, is the essence of statesmanship or true preach- 
ing but the establishment of a sound and righteous 
18 Heb. xi.8. 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 49 

faith among the people, individually and corporately, 
which shall make them stand and labor for everything 
good and pure and just?" "Thy faith shall make thee 
whole," — a faith that is vital, enlightened, profound, 
sincere and sacred shall cure our personal and social 
ills as nothing else can ever do. Faith that better 
things are possible, faith that wise and honest human 
effort is worth while, faith that the laws of the universe 
are benevolent and will hold together, — this at least 
is the downright and dominant conviction that lives 
somehow in the heart of every man who is trying to 
do something to help himself and his fellow-men. With- 
out such a faith he is powerless and of course useless. 
Now how may so noble a faith be acquired? Well, 
first of all, by duly realizing that it is an acquisition, 
an attainment, an achievement. It is not something 
that can be given, but rather something to be won. 
Lowell said: 

"Freedom and truth and all that these contain 
Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet: 
We climb to them through years of sweat and pain." 

So do we climb to any great, vital, worthy faith. 
We come to it through experience. It grows out of 
the life; so that the kind of faith we shall have will 
depend on the kind of life we live. In other words, a 
noble, spiritual faith is not so much the beginning of 
a good life as it is the product thereof. What, then, 
must be the leading marks of such a life in order that 
it may yield such a faith? 

1. There must be thoughtfulness, open-mindedness, 
intellectual hospitality, growth in knowledge, under- 
standing and wisdom. While intelligence is not the 
whole of life, and its limitations must be duly appre- 
ciated, yet it is always one of the principal means of 



50 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

the soul's progressive development. All our powers 
of perception, reason and judgment, with all the sound 
learning they can win, must underlie a faith that shall 
be ample, lofty, and adequate to the needs of the 
ever-expanding life of the human spirit. 

%. There must be sincerity, honesty, conscientious- 
ness, uprightness, moral integrity, purity, virtue, — 
in one word, that great quality which the Bible calls 
righteousness. He who flouts the moral law in his 
conduct will soon flout it in his thought. No man can 
live a corrupt life and long retain a growing faith in 
goodness. He must himself strive to be just and true 
who would build up through the years a sublime faith 
in the Everlasting Righteousness. 

3. There must be benevolence, good will, loving-kind- 
ness, mercy, compassion, sympathy. For it is in the 
soil which these qualities continually fertilize that the 
roots of a generous faith are best nourished. The 
opposite qualities will starve and ultimately kill all 
high, ardent, magnanimous confidence in either human 
or divine things. Live unselfishly and helpfully among 
your fellow men, and you can scarcely fail to believe 
somehow in the Eternal Goodness. 

4. No less must there be the spirit of reverence, 
the spirit of holiness, a region of inner calm and deep 
piety which is the very sanctuary of the soul. Here 
must be generated the most vital forces that make for 
a spiritual faith. Only when a man somehow finds God 
within shall he be likely to discover traces of Him with- 
out. It is by seeking Him within, by retiring to that 
purely private communion with the Infinite Spirit 
which it is the priceless privilege of the finite spirit to 
hold, that the most profound and certain assurance 
is experienced which enables a man, not only to believe, 



WHAT IS THE VALIDITY OF FAITH? 51 

but to know that the Divine Presence is the Supreme 
Reality of life. 

5. Finally, there must be a resolute attitude, the 
resolute will, if faith is to be vigorous. Constituted 
as we are, situated as we are, in such a world as this, 
among our kind, we are called, not only to a contem- 
plative life and a speculative life, but even more to 
an active life, — a life of active goodness, of service, 
of helpful and creative activity. "My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work," said Jesus. It is every man's 
great prerogative to do likewise, to be a co-laborer 
together with God; and only when he sets his will 
resolutely to this purpose, consecrating all his powers 
to usefulness, resolved to toil on and in his toil rejoice, 
even when the day grows dark and terror overspreads 
the land and sadness fills the heart with tears, — only 
so can one build up within himself, year by year, an 
invincible faith, that shall hold him steadfast through 
all storms, and make him a tower of strength for the 
shelter of other troubled souls. 

"O living will that shalt endure 

When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
Rise in the spiritual rock, 
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

That we may lift from out of dust 

A voice as unto him that hears, 

A cry above the conquer'd years, 
To one that with us works, and trust, 

With faith that comes of self-control, 
The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved, 

And all we flow from, soul in soul." 19 

19 Tennyson, In Memoriam, CXXX. 



Ill 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD 



HAVING seen what is the intrinsic nature of 
religion and what is the true validity of faith, 
we are ready to ask what we can know of God. 
It is the central and supreme question in our study. 
Of course the subject is so vast and so enshrouded in 
mystery that we inevitably experience the greatest diffi- 
culty in bringing it within the range of our compre- 
hension. Yet it is best to treat it in as clear and simple 
a way as possible, avoiding all unnecessary technicality 
of thought and language. If God is a Reality and not 
merely a Name, and if all men are somehow related to 
Him and need to know about Him, there ought to be 
some means of apprehending Him, or of ascertaining a 
large and vital measure of truth concerning Him, 
which an open-minded and sincere soul can understand 
without profound learning. 

At the very outset our problem presents three as- 
pects, which may be indicated by three subordinate 
questions : What does the idea of God signify ? what 
kind of knowledge is meant when we speak of knowing 
Him? and how, by what method, by virtue of what 
faculty or attainment or experience, are we enabled 
to gain such knowledge? If we can find valid answers 
to these questions, we shall at least open up a wide 
field of inquiry and shall discover how exceedingly im- 
portant are the issues which it contains. 

I. For ourselves the idea of God lies at the very cen- 

52 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 53 

ter of religion; indeed, educated as we Occidentals of 
the present age have been, it is difficult for us to think 
of religion without reference to a belief in a deity or in 
deities — although, as has been previously pointed out, 
Doctor Brinton reminds us that Buddhism inculcates 
no such belief. We, however, habitually assume the 
existence of a Supreme Being, whom we call by a 
variety of names, derived mostly from the Hebrew and 
Christian Scriptures. Whether any two of us have 
exactly the same idea when we speak of this Being, it 
may be hard to tell, because ideas are seldom, if ever, 
expressed with absolute precision and completeness ; so 
that we can only judge one another with approximate 
correctness at best. But so far as a general statement 
may go in representing the common conception of 
thoughtful people, it may be fairly said that our re- 
ligious faith postulates a Supreme Spiritual Per- 
sonality as the Ultimate Source of all phenomena, 
whose power, wisdom, goodness and love fill the uni- 
verse, who creates, sustains, animates and rules all 
worlds, who is the Author of our being and "the Father 
of the spirits of all flesh," whose providence is in all 
human history because He is the Moral Governor of 
mankind, and whose purposes concerning the children 
of men have been specially revealed to them in different 
ways, but preeminently in the life and teaching of 
Jesus Christ. To be sure, some of these notions would 
not be accepted by everybody; the last one, for in- 
stance, a devout Jew would be obliged to reject: and 
doubtless there are many, educated in modern science 
and philosophy, who would admit that they recognize 
an Inscrutable Power that they sincerely reverence, 
but that they are unable to call personal in any such 
anthropomorphic fashion as our language implies. 



54 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

But these are qualifications which do not greatly affect 
the essential truth, and the statement as a whole may 
be allowed to stand as a rough but tolerably accurate 
expression of the prevalent idea of God forming the 
background of religious thinking among intelligent 
people to-day. 

No need to trace here the historical development of 
the rich content of this great, complex conception, 
though that were a highly profitable task; suffice it to 
say that such development would be found to run from 
animism to polytheism, from polytheism to monothe- 
ism, from monotheism to Christian paternalism, and 
from Christian paternalism to those scientific and philo- 
sophical constructions which, in our own time, are 
denoted by the terms Realism, Idealism, Absolutism, 
etc. The fact is that man's idea of God has changed 
and grown with his long, slow, painful progress in 
other respects ; many and diverse influences have modi- 
fied it; and now new and powerful influences are tend- 
ing to modify it still further. Nevertheless it has per- 
sisted, in one form or another, through all the muta- 
tions and expansions of the past, increasing rather 
than diminishing in its significance; and this striking 
fact affords a fair warrant for expecting that it will 
continue to hold its place somehow in the enlarging 
thought of the world, and will still control 

"With growing sway the growing life of man." 

What difference does it make whether this idea be 
retained? The world will continue, life will go on, 
the generations will pass, each individual will play his 
little part in the drama of existence and quickly dis- 
appear; yea, measured on the scale which astronomers 
employ to gauge magnitudes and durations, our earth 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 55 

itself will soon enough share the fate of other planets 
that have frozen up or have coalesced to make some 
new flaming star: what boots it whether we think that 
a Supreme Wisdom sits upon the throne of the uni- 
verse, whether we are sure that an Eternal Love lives 
in its heart? 

Well, there are times when it does not seem to mat- 
ter much, one way or the other: we are busy with the 
affairs of life, we are full of energy and ambition, 
happiness is our daily portion, and every prospect is 
bright; or perhaps we are living all unworthily, being 
steeped in sensuality, refined or coarse, stupefied by 
sin, calloused by selfishness, full of wrath and doubting: 
in either case, very likely, we do not care a fig for 
the thought of God, even as we do not imagine that 
He — if He be at all — can care a fig for us. But by 
and by a change comes, some shock of doom occurs — 
the loss of health or wealth, the sorrow of a great 
bereavement, the ruin of our personal fortunes and 
hopes by such a calamity as an earthquake or a war, 
desolating a land or consuming nations — and lo! we 
are suddenly brought face to face with the tremendous 
fact that this world is full of tragedy. Then we begin 
to think more deeply, and to wonder what it all means, 
and to ask whether there is anything to come when 
the tragedy ends. We search our own hearts, we 
listen to our fellow men, we read books, we study sci- 
ence and philosophy, we peer into the vast, deep 
mystery of the surrounding universe for an answer to 
our anxious questioning. Is the Infinite Power that 
we behold everywhere, controlling all worlds, and here 
on earth making or breaking our human lives, — is this 
Power personal and paternal, or merely an all-pervad- 
ing Energy without benevolence or purpose or intelli- 



56 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

gence? It is not merely a speculative problem; it 
involves our own destiny and the destiny of those who 
were dearer to us than life itself, but who have passed 
beyond our sight; nay, the hope of civilization, the 
hope for the progress of mankind here upon the earth, 
is bound up in the final analysis with the character of 
the Ultimate Reality, however named, that abides for- 
ever at the center of things. With the soul full of 
grief and pain, with tens of thousands of human beings 
perishing "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," 
as in the Italian earthquake only recently, with Euro- 
pean society shaken to its foundations by the most 
terrific struggle of all history, and with this planet 
and every form of life upon it doomed to eventual 
extinction, what ground have we for supposing that 
our existence has any high and permanent worth, save 
as it is embraced somehow in the sweep and care of 
that Almighty Providence whose dominion is from ever- 
lasting to everlasting? It is hard to see. 

Such is a hint, albeit only a hint, of what the idea 
of God signifies, and of the difference it makes whether 
we hold it or not. 

II. Now what kind of knowledge is meant when we 
speak of knowing God? 

We have seen that the word knowledge is a some- 
what elastic term. In its more restricted sense it 
denotes those things of which we are clearly conscious, 
contained within the mind itself, — such as ideas, 
thoughts, feelings, convictions ; such as mental, moral, 
spiritual states, various and ever-changing; such as 
memories, aspirations, hopes, fears, etc. ; or those 
things which are objective, but of which we are indis- 
putably aware through sense perception, — as when we 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 57 

say that we know that the sun is shining, that the 
grass is green, that iron is hard and heavy, that some 
sounds are musical while others are harsh noises, that 
a rose is fragrant, that sugar is sweet, etc. ; or those 
things which are demonstrable by processes of reason- 
ing which we cannot gainsay, like the propositions of 
mathematics and the inferences which we are compelled 
to draw from axiomatic truths. In its broader sense 
it denotes a vast body of information which comes to 
most of us "second hand," upon the authority of 
scholars or experts, the testimony of observers and 
writers, the common understanding of educated people ; 
information, much of it, which has been slowly built up 
during ages of study, like nearly all our sciences ; or 
information that is widely diffused by the press, by 
libraries, schools and learned societies; indeed, the 
whole great mass of what we call general intelligence 
or knowledge or learning, consisting of information 
which rests back somewhere upon some one's "say so," 
usually with adequate reason, but not invariably. 

Into which of these two classes does our possible 
knowledge of God fall? 

There are those who affirm that it falls distinctly 
within the field of consciousness. They speak as if 
they thought that we can be as conscious of God as 
we are of ourselves, or as we are of our passing moods 
and our permanent convictions. But if this were so, 
it would seem as though all men would be agreed about 
it; whereas a few positively deny the existence of God, 
many more consider that it is impossible to know 
whether He exists or not, and a multitude of others, 
while earnestly believing in Him, doubt whether it is 
strictly proper to say that we are actually conscious 
of Him. At the same time it must be remarked that 



58 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

the word consciousness has come lately to have a larger 
signification than formerly. The physiological psy- 
chologists are showing us that each man's conscious- 
ness embraces, not only a central area of great 
vividness of perception and realization, but a surround- 
ing or an underlying area of diminishing vividness, 
shading off into dimness and darkness ; and that from 
this shadowy region — called the unconscious, or the 
subconscious, or the subliminal — there come ideas, ap- 
prehensions, insights, suggestions, promptings, inspira- 
tions which, in moments of intense experience, flame up 
into the central area of vivid understanding, like 
flashes of light; or, without thus manifesting them- 
selves, they may remain hidden in that deep reservoir, 
and yet may be potent to shape our beliefs, judgments 
and actions. 20 If these things are so, it may very 
well be that our apprehension of God is usually of this 
vague, feeble or submerged character, but that in mo- 
ments of illumination and exaltation, and in rare souls 
perhaps continuously, it flames up as a blessed cer- 
tainty and a living reality in the vivid center of 
conscious experience. Thus we can understand how a 
spiritually awakened man — one, for instance, who has 
felt very deeply the influence of Jesus Christ and has 
responded to it — may have a religious consciousness 
which makes him as surely aware of the presence and 

20 "Our studies up to this point have led us to the general con- 
clusion that a large measure of the experiences of life are con- 
served or deposited in what may be called a storehouse of neuro- 
pathic dispositions or residua. This storehouse is the unconscious. 
From this storehouse our conscious processes draw for the ma- 
terial of thought. Further, a large amount and variety of evi- 
dence . . . has shown that conserved experiences may function 
without arising into consciousness, i.e., as a subconscious process." 
—"The Unconscious," p. 229, by Morton Prince, M.D., LL.D., the 
Macmillan Co., 1914. 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 59 

power of God in his life as he is that he loves his 
fellowmen; while one who has never had any such 
quickening of the soul, who has never been in any sense 
"born from above," may have no touch of a similar 
awareness — and will be likely to have none until some- 
thing arouses him, when he will exclaim as Jacob did 
when he awaked out of sleep, "Surely the Lord is in 
this place, and I knew it not." 21 

But since it is plain that not all men are indubitably 
conscious of God, but that even the best of witnesses, 
while sure that He is, cannot tell exactly what He is, 
and that they and we and all are forever seeking Him, 
if haply we may feel after Him and find Him, it ap- 
pears best to say that our possible knowledge of God 
partakes rather of the character of belief than of 
actual consciousness or of positive demonstration. In 
other words, it is a composite conviction, to which many 
factors contribute, and possesses so high a degree of 
probability as to amount to practical certainty while 
falling short of absolute certainty. Accordingly we 
are thrown back upon the position taken in the pre- 
ceding chapter. We there saw that only a small part 
of what we call knowledge consists of things which 
can be precisely and conclusively proved, while the 
greater part consists of things which we believe upon 
evidence sufficient in amount and quality to produce 
conviction in minds competent to appreciate it. Upon 
such conviction we act in all the practical relationships 
of life, and are reasonable beings in so doing. We 
are to think, learn, reason, test, prove, as far as possi- 
ble, in all our study on any and every subject; but 
then we are compelled to admit that we can know only 
a very little at best, and are obliged to believe a 
31 Gen. xxviii:16. 



60 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

thousand things which we cannot demonstrate, and to 
await many other things which we are not yet prepared 
either to believe or to deny. So we are forced to "walk 
by faith, not by sight," if we walk at all, — just as we 
travel along a country road at night, seeing a little 
way ahead, and that little sufficing. Because we can- 
not see the end of the journey from the beginning, 
shall we refuse to travel altogether? 

This position is thoroughly tenable. A man may 
properly say, "I believe in the existence of God, and 
am prepared to give my reasons for so doing," when 
he could not truthfully say, "I know that God exists, 
and I can prove it, and indeed I am conscious of it." 
One may be conscious of the thought of God, and the 
idea may be very distinct in his mind; he may be con- 
scious of deep reverence and earnest aspiration with 
reference to what he feels to be the Divine Presence; 
and he may be conscious of a firm conviction that there 
is an infinite "Power not ourselves that makes for 
righteousness," that he conceives as the Soul of the 
universe and gladly calls the Father in heaven. But 
all this is purely subjective; and the question is, How, 
speaking strictly, can one claim to be conscious of 
the objective reality? To be sure it may be answered 
that, under our modern conception of the Divine 
immanence, God is not only an objective reality, but 
also a living, indwelling Spirit, manifesting Himself in 
a subjective experience; and that therefore we may 
rightly say that we are conscious of Him, even as we 
are conscious that we live in Humanity and that Hu- 
manity lives in us. But this is an extension of the 
older meaning of the word consciousness which seems 
somewhat unwarrantable — although it would be sanc- 
tioned readily enough by Bergson and others who speak 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 61 

freely of consciousness in animals and even in plants. 22 
Former usage limited the term to the representation 
of those activities and states of mind which constituted 
clear, positive intelligence, of which one could be en- 
tirely certain: when one was said to be conscious of 
anything one was perfectly sure of it; there was no 
doubt, no misgiving, no uncertainty. In such strict 
sense can it be said that any man is as conscious of 
God as he is of his own mental processes ? Perhaps ! 
but the instances are unquestionably rare; and these 
rare instances, together with those less vivid or even 
unconscious experiences, just alluded to, which are 
nowadays covered by the word consciousness, afford 
rather one of the arguments for believing in the exist- 
ence of God than an absolute proof of such existence. 
In the language of President J. G. Schurman, "I ap- 
prehend no little harm has been done by attempting 
to make our belief in God more certain than it actually 
is. We have such a belief, and I hold it is legitimate; 
but it does not belong to that kind of absolutely cer- 
tain knowledge we are able to have of objects so simple 
and abstract as the space and numbers of mathe- 
matics." 23 Again he says, "I am unable to assign to 
our belief in God a higher certainty than that possessed 
by the working hypotheses of science." 24 

Such, then, is the fundamental quality of our knowl- 
edge of God; it bears essentially the character of be- 
lief; it is a great, composite conviction, produced by 
many factors, and possesses (for most people at any 
rate) so high a degree of probability as to amount to 
practical certainty while falling short of absolute 
certainty. 

22 See Bergson, "Creative Evolution," pp. 130, 135-6, 143. 

23 "Belief in God," p. 40. 

24 Ibid., p. 43. 



62 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

III. Now how may this "knowledge" be gained, how 
may this great conviction be established? By virtue 
of what faculty or attainment or experience in our- 
selves can we apprehend God or ascertain important 
truth concerning Him? 

Well, the first thing to be said is that any knowledge 
of God which we can acquire, any conviction regarding 
Him which we can establish, must be, at best, extremely 
meager. We may apprehend Him, but we cannot com- 
prehend Him, — we finite beings cannot put the reach 
of our thought around the Infinite Being; if we could 
do so, He would soon cease to be of interest to the ever- 
expanding soul of man, and would become as the myth- 
ical deities of antiquity. 

The next thing to be said is that the various names 
which we apply to God, whether they be Pagan or 
Hebrew or Christian, whether they smack of religion 
or science or philosophy, are only so many signs by 
which we, like little children, seek to designate a Reality 
that we instinctively recognize as transcendent. We 
may call him "Jehovah, Jove or Lord," the Eternal, 
the Almighty or the Living God, — we may characterize 
Him as the Heavenly Eather, the Supreme Ruler, the 
"Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness," 
the Universal Energy, the Absolute, or the Great 
Spirit : but all these and all kindred terms and descrip- 
tions are only suggestive symbols, partial and in- 
adequate, to represent our confessedly limited concep- 
tions of the Illimitable and the Inscrutable Being. 
"The Lloly One that inhabiteth eternity," however con- 
cealed or revealed, must be so much higher and greater 
than we can imagine that any name which we may em- 
ploy to denote Him should be spoken with some degree 
of reverent reserve. 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 63 

In the next place it is obvious that, if God is and 
if He corresponds at all to what we mean by these 
high appellatives, He must be apprehended in different 
ways by different minds. Even of the material uni- 
verse the same thing is true: one person apprehends 
mainly its law and order, another its beauty, another 
its terror, and still another its benevolence. How much 
more must such be the case with the Infinite Spirit 
that is the Soul of the universe ! One person may see 
or feel chiefly His power and glory, another His jus- 
tice and severity, another His goodness and love, and 
still another His forgiving and redeeming grace. All 
religious literature, preeminently the Bible, is full of 
this great variety of human thinking about the Divine 
Nature. He is ever alluded to as "manifesting" Him- 
self now in one way, now in another way, and as having 
"spoken" to mankind "by divers portions and in divers 
manners" 25 ; but this is only another form of expres- 
sion to indicate the truth that the children of men, 
with their various moods and experiences in a changing 
world, see God through broken lights and shadows, 
"through a glass, darkly," and not "face to face," and 
find Him according to their insight and understanding. 
"With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful, 
with the upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright. 
With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with 
the froward thou wilt shew thyself unsavory." 26 

What is it in ourselves, then, that enables us to 
apprehend God at all, however variously or imper- 
fectly, and makes it possible to ascertain any measure 
of truth about Him? The question is most pertinent; 
and an analogy may help us to answer it. 

a Heb. s i:l. 

28 II Sam. xxii:26, 27. 



64 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

We are endowed with five physical senses by means 
of which we are able to learn something of the physical 
world lying around us and substantiating itself in our 
bodies; and it is conceivable that, if we had twice as 
many senses, we might learn twice as much — so that 
it is not unreasonable to suppose that infinite wonders 
and glories are hidden from us, not because they do 
not exist, but because our powers of apprehension are 
so limited ! Be that as it may, these five physical senses 
are media or channels or tracts through which the ex- 
ternal world conveys its phenomena to us, sending its 
messages by these various routes to the central Self 
within. But we may turn the statement around and 
say that these senses are so many avenues by which 
the soul goes forth to reach and explore the outward 
world; or that they are so many windows through 
which the soul looks out upon the material realm 
spreading around it. Even so it may be said that 
there are spiritual avenues through which our minds 
and hearts go out, as it were, to meet the King of 
kings; or that there are spiritual windows through 
which the soul of man looks out upon a psychical 
world, lying partly within but mainly without. These 
spiritual avenues or windows may be properly called 
spiritual senses, and there are at least five or six of 
them, namely: the will, the reason, the moral sense, 
the aesthetic sense, the affections, and the religious 
sense. These are not so many departments or com- 
partments of our being, nor yet separate faculties or 
capacities ; but are rather various ways in which the 
whole Self, receptive and responsive and active, comes 
into conscious contact with the facts and truths of 
the psychical world, the spiritual universe, in which 
it exists and of which it is a living part. 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 65 

In most men some one of these powers is likely to 
be dominant. In one man it is the will, in another it 
is the reason, in another the moral sense, in still another 
the aesthetic sense, in a fifth it is the affections, and in 
the sixth the religious susceptibility. Of course in 
the greatest men there is a happy balance or a har- 
monious working of all these endowments, and when 
developed by education or some other rich experience 
they produce the world's true leaders. 

Now it is evident that, if we can know anything at 
all about God or can ascertain any truth concerning 
Him, it must be by the exercise of one or more of these 
powers in ourselves. By virtue of the will in us we 
postulate a Supreme Will and come to know God as 
Cause, as Dr. Martineau ably argues ; 27 by the power 
of thought in us we come to know Him as Intelligence, 
finding the marks of intelligence throughout the uni- 
verse; by the moral sense in us we apprehend Him as 
Moral Ruler, and see all human history bearing witness 
to His righteous government of the world; by the 
aesthetic sense, the sense of beauty, in ourselves we 
"behold the King in his beauty"; by the instinct of 
love in our hearts we apprehend Him as Supreme Love ; 
and by the religious instinct, the spirit of holiness, in 
us we feel that He is indeed "the Holy One that in- 
habiteth eternity," and we spontaneously worship 
Him "in the beauty of holiness." Thus we look out of 
these various windows, or go out through these vari- 
ous avenues, or pursue these different paths in our 
seeking God, "if haply" we may "feel after him and 
find him"; and at the same time we understand that 
He must be more and greater than we can hope to 
find in any of these ways, — more and greater than the 
"See his "Study of Religion," Vol. I. 



66 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

sum total of our varied apprehensions of Him as Ulti- 
mate Cause, Supreme Intelligence, Moral Governor, 
Perfect Beauty, Eternal Love and the All-Holy One. 
But we use these expressions and follow these ways be- 
cause they are the best that are available to us, limited 
as we are, in our attempt to know God and to tell how 
we know Him. 

We find the thought of God in ourselves. How it 
comes to be with us, whether by tuition or by intuition, 
we may not agree; that is to say, whether it has been 
handed down to us by our ancestors and imparted to 
us by our associates, or is innate and arises sponta- 
neously within us, we may not be able by philosophy or 
science to determine positively. While it is undoubt- 
edly true that most men are taught the idea of God, 
and never think to ask themselves how otherwise they 
could derive it, yet it is equally true that many of 
the most penetrating minds are sure beyond perad- 
venture that this idea is given to them in the same way 
that self-consciousness is given. One writer expresses 
the latter truth as follows: 

"The only answer we can make, when we ask for its 
origin, is that our thoughts cannot rise higher than 
their source; that our Thought of God can have no 
less an origin than the Infinite, Absolute One ; that 
our consciousness of God must come from God himself, 
— the Perfect Reality. The very fact that Man thinks 
God is, if we trust our mental laws for anything, evi- 
dence of the Real worth of the Thought. Beyond this 
fact reasoning fails. Intuition must enable the mind 
to see, if it shall at all see, the offered truth. There 
is no proof for it any more than there is proof for 
Self-Consciousness." 28 
28 Rev, Dr. Clay MacCauley, "Memories and Memorials," p. 416. 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 67 

But however originating, we find ourselves possess- 
ing the thought of God and asking ourselves upon 
what grounds we may rest our belief in Him. If such 
belief is a great, complex conviction, to which many 
factors contribute, what are these factors, what are 
the evidences which support our faith? If our faith 
in God is reasonable, it will be worth while to state 
the principal reasons which we think warrant it. 

1. Foremost among these reasons is our own con- 
scious personal existence. This is the center from 
which we must work outward, the starting point for 
all our thought-excursions, the bedrock upon which we 
must lay the foundations of an}^ temple of faith, hope 
and love that we may seek to build. And we are abso- 
lutely sure of this. Whatever doubts may trouble us 
concerning other things, we have no doubt about this ; 
we know that we are, that we are here, that we are 
thinking and loving beings, and that our selfhood 
persists from day to day. We know, too, that we 
learn and grow and improve; that we have wonderful 
memories, insights, inspirations and visions ; that we 
entertain transcendent ideas and cherish 

"thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars." 
We are aware also that there are unplumbed depths 
in our nature, that undeveloped potentialities lie with- 
in us, that heights of character to which we have not 
yet attained are nevertheless within our reach, while 
intimations of beauty and gladness still awaiting us 
are ever luring our hearts onward and upward. We 
know our own virtues and our own faults better than 
any one else can know them; we know that a profound 
sense of right and wrong possesses and commands us ; 
we know that a spirit of holy goodness pleads with 
our souls ; and we know that purity and impurity, sin 



68 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

and guilt, remorse and penitence and pardon are not 
empty words. Thus our intellectual, moral, spiritual 
life, yielding its varied experiences and running on 
from year to year, attests our abiding yet developing 
personality, which is the one living reality of which 
we are consciously certain in a world of change and 
tumult and fathomless mystery. 

2. Being thus absolutely sure of our personal exist- 
ence and our spiritual nature, we turn next to inquire 
how we have come to be. Here we immediately enter 
a vast realm of new truth. For the scientific learning 
of mankind has been so completely made over within 
the last hundred years that our explanation of man's 
place in nature is utterly different from that of former 
times. Modern evolutionary science may be truly said 
to constitute a great, new, wonderful revelation, as 
significant in its way for the present age as the Chris- 
tian revelation was for the Augustan age of the Roman 
Empire; it has given us literally "new heavens and a 
new earth"; it has reconstructed natural history and 
human history; and it has enlarged and enriched by 
many degrees our understanding of the marvelous 
processes by which Humanity has been produced. As 
the story is told, for instance, in the late Professor 
Henry Drummond's "The Ascent of Man," or in one 
of the very last of Mr. John Fiske's little books, 
"Through Nature to God," it is dramatic, impressive 
and most inspiring. In the light of such a review we 
see a process of progressive development, reaching 
through uncounted asons of time, by which the worlds 
were formed, by which the earth was made ready for 
the abode of life, by which lower and then higher and 
still higher organisms were produced wherein life mani- 
fested itself, by which at length a race of human beings 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 69 

appeared, and by which the life of mankind has slowly 
unfolded, expanded, deepened, and risen to spiritual 
attainments which crown it all with glory and honor. 

It is the function of science primarily to deal with 
phenomena, to explain methods, to tell how the changes 
of the universe have come to pass. But in pursuing 
its inquiries touching these things, it finds that the 
universe is under the reign of law and order, from 
which caprice and chance are eliminated, and that it 
is animated by one all-pervading and all-enduring 
Energy, from which everything proceeds, to which at 
last everything can be traced up. When the question 
arises, as it inevitably does, What is the nature of 
this Energy? the scientific scholars are divided in their 
answers ; one group saying, We do not know, it is im- 
possible to know; another group saying, The only 
Energy we know anything about, or that is needed to 
account for the universe, is material; and yet another 
group saying, The ultimate ground or substance of 
the universe is Spiritual Life or Divine Energy, — in 
the words of Mr. Fiske, "The infinite and eternal Power 
that is manifested in every pulsation of the universe is 
none other than the living God." 29 

3. The position to which science thus leads, yielding 
the great conceptions of Unity, Energy, Life and (in 
the judgment of many scholars) Spirituality as the 
everlasting Source of phenomena, the Final Reality in 
the universe, is substantiated by Philosophy. For it 
is the function of Philosophy to deal with the facts of 
mind, intelligence, spirituality, as these are disclosed 
primarily in human life. It studies these in relation 
to the whole problem of man's existence, and thus deals 
also with facts lying outside of the human realm, so 
» "The Idea of God," etc., p. 166. 



70 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

that it takes the materials and conclusions of science, 
and builds out of them its systems of truth. Now the 
facts of mind, intelligence, spirituality, everywhere 
found in human life, are as real as any other facts 
in the world; they are as substantial as the facts of 
the sun, moon and stars, or those of the solid earth ; 
and they may point as clearly in their own way to 
certain great ends and meanings as do the facts of 
astronomy or geology or biology. It is simply a ques- 
tion of rightly interpreting or construing them. 

And in what direction do these great facts of human 
life point? Here we have, in ourselves, a first-hand 
knowledge of them, — mind, intelligence, spirituality; 
thought, will, conscience; love, benevolence, reverence. 
What do they signify? Surely they spring out of 
some source not less than ourselves. Personality in us 
must originate in something not less than Personality 
in the universe to which we belong. If that "some- 
thing" is vastly higher and greater than any per- 
sonality that we have ever known, well and good! our 
own personality shall be but a hint or symbol of such 
a Transcendent Deity ; and our poor language will not 
enable us to do better than to call Him, therefore, the 
Supreme Spiritual Personality, the Living God. 

4. We may take a further step by glancing at the 
providence of human history. The Power which fills 
the universe is a Living Power; it manifests itself in 
our bodies in the physical life which we possess ; it 
wells up in our souls in our conscious personality, in 
the forms of mind, intelligence, conscience, volition, 
affection, veneration, aspiration. But it is the very 
same Power that has been a "Governor among the 
nations." For a mighty moral energy has always 
stirred the souls of men, and disturbed them and im- 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 71 

pelled them, or restrained and corrected them, and has 
thereby so overruled affairs and events and develop- 
ments as to "make for righteousness" in the long run. 
By virtue of this moral energy resident in Humanity, 
evils are slowly outgrown, wrongs are at length recog- 
nized and overthrown, rights are finally perceived and 
established, and an ever-widening range is given to the 
principles of justice, mercy and benevolence. Thus 
there is such a thing as moral progress in the history 
of mankind, tedious and painful though it be; and 
great moral leaders are raised up, and stupendous 
events culminate in moral victories — like the uprooting 
of slavery by our Civil War — and the work of right- 
eousness becomes peace, and the effect of righteousness 
quietness and assurance forever. The very protest 
which millions of people are making to-day against 
the frightful wrongs of the world is itself the clearest 
proof of the depth and strength of this moral energy 
that lives and grows in the souls of men; and out of 
protest will come ultimately correction and reconstruc- 
tion. 

Now this moral energy upspringing within each one 
of us, to which none of us can be wholly oblivious, for- 
ever prompting or checking us, now giving its august 
sanctions to our behavior and now administering its 
solemn rebuke even to our thought of wrong-doing, — 
whence is it derived? Surely it is not of our own 
creating; neither is it altogether begotten by the 
human society that surrounds us — it is merely 
"brought forth" thus: but rather we must say that 
our own moral sentiments, and those of our fellow 
men around us, expressed and crystallized in the just 
laws of organized civil society, are a manifestation and 
an index of the moral character of the Government of 



72 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

the universe; and this is tantamount to saying that 
that Government is a Divine Government. Thus the 
moral law written in our hearts becomes perhaps the 
very deepest and surest witness which is borne to us 
concerning the immediate presence in our human world 
and in each human life of the Supreme Power that 
Doctor Martineau described as "a Divine Mind and 
Will ruling the universe, and holding moral relations 
with mankind." 

5. Still another element of our faith in God, another 
method of learning the truth about Him, another means 
of apprehending Him, is afforded by the experiences 
of those spiritually sensitized souls that have been 
awakened and illumined in an unusual way or to an 
unusual degree. It were as vain to deny that there 
are such souls as to deny that there are poets and 
musicians, and it were as foolish to ignore the facts 
of which they testify as to say that the visions of the 
poet or the musician are not worth noticing. "The 
exceptional experiences of exceptional men," as Dean 
Hodges speaks of them, may be as valid and significant 
as the ordinary experiences of ordinary men. It is 
simply a question of verifying and interpreting them. 
It is no more strange that "the pure in heart" should 
"see God" than that a mathematical genius should in- 
stantly read the sum total of an extensive column of 
figures. Men and women who are gifted by nature 
with intuitive perception, having clear and deep in- 
sight and delicate feelings, and who perhaps have been 
chastened by sorrow and tempered by suffering, learn- 
ing lessons of submission, obedience, trust and love, 
and living in the spirit of prayer and adoration, may 
be surely expected to find evidences of the presence 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 73 

and power of God in the world and in their own lives 
which coarser people cannot possibly understand. In- 
deed it is always upon life's higher levels that we 
naturally look for those experiences which shall make 
us aware of God. To be sure, we may not entirely 
escape Him upon life's lower levels, because His provi- 
dence of law and order still enfolds us and holds us 
in its grasp and disciplines us ; but it is mainly in 
the upper regions, above the mists and miasmas of 
evil, where the air is pure and the sunlight is clear, 
where truth and love and goodness and freedom have 
opportunity to bear their legitimate sway, — it is 
mainly there, where the holiest men and women seek 
constantly to dwell, that the human soul may most 
confidently hope to hold communion with God. Thus 
the saints do certainly have something to teach us 
which we may not otherwise learn, namely : that a deep, 
vital, inner piety, a simple but sincere love in the heart, 
an open mind, an obedient will, a reverent and yearn- 
ing but submissive spirit, "meek and lowly, pure and 
holy," may bring us into a blessed consciousness of 
the Divine Presence, so that we shall feel the tides of 
the Divine Life flowing into us and through us, when 
nothing else can yield us so great a joy. This is the 
message of the Christian mystic; yea, it is the most 
central and essential truth lying at the heart of all 
spiritual religion; and all our external searchings, 
whether by science or philosophy or ceremonial ob- 
servances, will find their culmination and their satis- 
faction when they lead to this profound yet childlike 
spiritual attitude. God is not so surely found at the 
end of a logical syllogism as in a life of faithful de- 
votion to duty in the spirit of reverent gratitude, trust 
and love. 



"74 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

"O Power, more near my life than life itself 
(Or what seems life to us in sense immured), 
Even as the roots, shut in the darksome earth, 
Share in the tree-top's joyance, and conceive 
Of sunshine and wide air and winged things 
By sympathy of nature, so do I 
Have evidence of Thee so far above, 
Yet in and of me! Rather Thou the root 
Invisibly sustaining, hid in light, 
Not darkness, or in darkness made by us. 
If sometimes I must hear good men debate 
Of other witness of Thyself than Thou, 
As if there needed any help of ours 
To nurse Thy flickering life, that else must cease, 
Blown out, as 'twere a candle, by men's breath, 
My soul shall not be taken in their snare, 
To change her inward surety for their doubt 
Muffled from sight in formal robes of proof: 
While she can only feel herself through Thee, 
I fear not Thy withdrawal; more I fear, 
Seeing, to know Thee not, hoodwinked with dreams 
Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, Thou, 
Walking Thy garden still, commun'st with men, 
Missed in the commonplace of miracle." 30 

6. "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst 
thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" asks 
one of the characters in the Book of Job. 31 

Jeremiah represents the Lord as saying, "Then 
shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto 
me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek 
me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all 
your heart." 32 

"No man hath seen God at any time," says the 
author of the First Epistle of John. "If we love one 
another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected 
in us. . . . God is love; and he that dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God, and God in him. He that loveth not, 

80 Lowell, The Cathedral. 
31 Job xi.7, Jer. xxix.12, 13. 
32 Jer. xxix.12, 13. 



WHAT CAN WE KNOW OF GOD? 75 

knoweth not God; for God is love. . . . Hereby know 
we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath 
given us of his Spirit.' 3 33 

To kindred purport are the remarks of St. Paul, — 
"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that 
we are children of God." 34 "And because ye are sons, 
God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your 
hearts, crying, Abba, Father." 35 

Finally, Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart; 
for they shall see God." 36 "If any man will do his 
will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of 
God, or I speak of myself." 37 

These expressions register the high-water mark of 
spiritual truth in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. 
They not only represent man's deep yearning for God, 
but point out the one sure way of finding Him, namely : 
the way of a spiritual life, the way of a devout, loving, 
obedient attitude of mind and heart. Thus they con- 
firm the supreme lesson which we have been slowly 
learning, that God is to be found and known mainly 
within the human soul rather than without, — a lesson 
which is finely set forth in Frederick L. Hosmer's 
beautiful poem: 

"Go not, my soul, in search of Him: 
Thou wilt not find Him there, — 
Or in the depths of shadow dim, 
Or heights of upper air. 

For not in far-off realms of space 

The Spirit hath its throne; 
In every heart it findeth place 

And waiteth to be known. 

33 1 Johniv:12, 16, 8, 13. 

34 Rom. viii:16. 

35 Gal. iv:6. 

36 Matt. v:8. 

37 St. John vii:17. 



76 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

Thought answereth alone to thought, 
And soul with soul hath kin; 

The outward God he findeth not, 
Who finds not God within. 

And if the vision come to thee 

Revealed by inward sign, 
Earth will be full of Deity 

And with His glory shine. 

Thou shalt not want for company, 

Nor pitch thy tent alone; 
The indwelling God will go with thee, 

And show thee of His own. 

Oh gift of gifts, oh grace of grace, 
That God should condescend 

To make thy heart His dwelling place, 
And be thy daily Friend! 

Then go not thou in search of Him, 

But to thyself repair; 
Wait thou within the silence dim, 

And thou shalt find Him there." 



IV 



WHAT SHALIi WE BELIEVE ABOUT IMMORTALITY f 

EVERY thoughtful person must be interested in 
the subject of immortality. It is a matter of 
such direct, personal concern to each human 
being that it easily commands the earnest attention of 
the enlightened and sincere, while it cannot be utterly 
and permanently ignored by any. Even if no other 
influence draws one to it, the silent processes of nature, 
— the lapse of time, the progress of life, the waning 
of physical energy, — must soon bring one face to face 
with the old question, "If a man die, shall he live 
again?" Although we may naturally and properly 
be absorbed mainly in the things which are now and 
here, yet we quickly discover that the order of life 
makes the present relate to the future; so that, while 
we should, indeed, "be not anxious for the morrow," 
we should be prudent enough to take the morrow into 
some account, — at least to consider whether there shall 
be any morrow at all. In other words, we cannot dis- 
guise the fact that human life and the world containing 
it are not stationary, but in process, belonging to a 
vast, continuous system of progressive change ; so that 
the ultimate questions, Whence, whither and where- 
fore? must ever be the transcendently important ques- 
tions for the mind and heart of man. 

Therefore no serious consideration of modern re- 
ligious problems can omit a study of the evidences for 
a future life. To be sure, the subject does not concern 

77 



78 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

religion alone; it is more or less germane to philos- 
ophy also, and does not lie entirely beyond the pur- 
view of science. Yet the intellectual atmosphere of 
our time is so full of Christian influences, and Chris- 
tian teaching has always so definitely implied a belief 
in immortality, that we can hardly separate the subject 
from the other great themes of spiritual religion. The 
truth disclosed by a candid inquiry into the nature of 
religion, the validity of faith, the being of God, the 
character of Christ, and the value of the Bible nat- 
urally leads us to ask what can be thought about 
human destiny. The interest awakened by these other 
lines of research logically culminates in this question 
as to the final outcome of our existence ; and we feel 
that the encouragement afforded by a fair review of 
the spiritual development of the race ought to issue 
in a firmer confidence in personal immortality, or else 
the whole process must prove disappointing, and the 
mystery of life will be not only deeper but darker than 
ever. 

At the same time we are disposed to scrutinize more 
closely than formerly the reasons advanced for the 
support of such a faith. We are not satisfied to ac- 
cept a doctrine merely because it is a sacred tradition 
hoary with age, or because it is sanctioned by a vener- 
able and mighty institution, or because it is taught in 
the Holy Scriptures, or even because it is intertwined 
with the dearest affections and hopes of the human 
heart. All these considerations may create a pre- 
sumption in its favor, and we shall respect it accord- 
ingly; but they do not necessarily establish its truth. 
Indeed, there is a vague suspicion in many minds that 
the discoveries of modern science and the critical think- 
ing of recent years have invalidated most of the 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 79 

arguments heretofore made in behalf of the great belief 
in a future life. Therefore we want to go over the 
whole ground again, feeling our way at every step, 
and examining more thoroughly every position; and 
especially we want to hear how the case stands in the 
light of present knowledge. 

Such at least is the attitude of earnest minds. Of 
course those who are not earnest may dismiss it with 
the flippant assumption that nobody can know any- 
thing respecting this matter, and there is no use in 
thinking much about it anyway; and perhaps many 
others, like Gallio, "care for none of these things." 
Absorbed in the life that now is, comfortable and 
happy, and content, as they think, to take "one world 
at a time," they are not conscious of any strong desire 
to live in another state of being. But for those who 
lift up their eyes to look out upon the universe in 
solemn wonder, and who reflect upon the nature of 
man and the deeper meanings of experience; and espe- 
cially for those whose pathways have been over- 
shadowed by the sorrow of bereavement, and whose 
love has followed into the darkness the fading vision 
of a dear life, longing constantly 

". . . for the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still," 

the subject must have an interest unspeakably sacred 
and profound. They may be sad, perplexed and doubt- 
ful, but they are neither shallow nor insincere ; and 
they wait for the light of indisputable truth as only 
they can wait and watch who feel that all the true 
glory of life is involved in this one paramount issue. 

It is pertinent to remark here that the belief in 
immortality, when worthily held, is linked with the 
very noblest aspirations of the human soul. It may be 



80 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

held unworthily, indeed, being merely a form of selfish- 
ness, the selfish desire for continuance, without refer- 
ence to purification; and perhaps it is all too fre- 
quently held so. But when it is cherished thoughtfully, 
devoutly, sublimely, with a humble and contrite heart, 
and yet with a valiant conviction of the eternal 
supremacy of righteousness, it is bound up, not only 
with our deepest love, but also with our holiest prayers : 
we crave immortality not so much for ourselves as for 
those who are far better than we, and for the sake of 
the triumph of good over evil in ourselves, in others, 
in the wide universe. Even if the prospect of our own 
final extinction did not trouble us, the thought that 
our dear ones who have left us have entirely perished 
were almost unbearable. As Dr. George A. Gordon 
puts it, "A true man does not fear death for himself, 
but for his friends ; it is not his own grave that is 
dreadful, but the grave of those whom he loves. . . . 
Not what becomes of us when we die, but what becomes 
of them when they die is the great question of human 
love. . . . We so value, not ourselves, but our beloved 
dead, that we cannot think of them as lost to us, lost 
to the universe, lost to God." And so Tennyson urges 
the question, — 

"The faith that of the living whole 

No life shall fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God within the soul?" 38 

It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the prevalence 
of the belief in a future life, or to inquire much further 
as to its origin. The broad fact may be granted at 
once that it has been entertained by the vast majority 
of mankind, although many notable exceptions have 

38 In Memoriam. LI V. 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 81 

occurred, and a very high type of religion has sub- 
sisted without it, as among the Hebrews ; and we may 
concede that it springs spontaneously out of the in- 
stinctive feelings, aspirations and convictions of the 
soul. In the words of James Freeman Clarke, "not 
only all primitive religions, but all the great ethnic 
religions, have awakened in man's soul the same belief 
in a future life. It is the instinct of consciousness 
which creates this faith. Man, as a conscious personal 
being, a center of life, feeling himself to be a thinking, 
feeling, and choosing person, sees no reason why he 
should cease to exist when his body is dissolved. . . . 
And the more full of life he is, the less fear of death 
he has. This is the evidence of those who trust to 
their instincts. They have faith in immortality because 
it is natural to believe in it. They are made so." 39 

Of course the significance of a statement like this 
depends altogether upon the value of human instincts. 
The question immediately arises whether these are as 
reliable as the processes of reasoning. Perhaps we 
cannot determine this point exactly, but we are learn- 
ing to-day to attach more importance to instinct than 
was formerly done. We see that the instincts of any 
given creature are the surest indication of its nature 
that we can have. The instinct which carries a duck 
into the water, or an eagle into the air, or a new-born 
babe to its mother's breast, or a youth and maiden into 
the marriage relation, or a race into acts of worship 
is a clearer proof of natural forces and laws, in each 
instance, than any a priori reasoning could afford. In- 
stinct, in fact, is the voice of universal nature speaking 
in and through the particular case. When a little 
baby girl fondles and caresses her doll, loving it almost 

89 "Ten Great Religions," Vol. II, p. 336. 



82 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

as really and strongly as her parents love her, she is 
simply acting out her natural maternal instinct; and 
the motherhood of the whole human race may be said 
to be speaking in and through her in that act. She 
herself cannot understand it, intellectually, reflectively, 
scientifically; but older people do because they have 
learned more fully the meaning of all such things. 
So it is, doubtless, with us in our instinctive belief in 
God and immortality: we may not be mature enough 
yet, we may not have risen high enough in the scale 
of experience, to comprehend the whole significance of 
this deep voice of nature speaking in and through us; 
but by and by, when we shall have advanced further 
in our development, here or elsewhere, we may per- 
ceive that such an instinctive belief or aspiration was 
as sure an indication of the reality toward which it 
pointed as the web-foot of the duck is an index of its 
watery home, or as the motherly affection of the little 
girl for her doll is a sign of her own latent or poten- 
tial maternity. Certainly, in the light of evolution, 
such a consideration is not to be despised; for evolu- 
tion shows us that back of every man stands the whole 
human race, and back of the human race lies the un- 
folding order of the infinite universe. 

But granting the prevalence and the prophecy of 
this instinctive belief in immortality, can we verify it, 
i. e., can we prove it to the intellect? This is the 
crucial question. And frankly the answer must be No, 
if by the term proof we mean mathematical demonstra- 
tion. The utmost that we can do is to establish a very 
high degree of probability, or to produce the strongest 
possible conviction, so that one man may believe with 
all his mind and heart, but still cannot make another 
believe. Hence he who dogmatizes on the subject, 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 83 

whether he take his cue from the Scriptures or the 
doctrinal systems of the theologians or the misgivings 
of the agnostics, is inexcusable. The only proper 
attitude is one of candor, open-mindedness and fear- 
lessness, seeking "the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth." 

But if the affirmative of the question cannot be in- 
controvertibly established, neither can the negative. 
To deny human immortality because we do not know 
that the soul survives the dissolution of the body, would 
be like saying that there are no more comets in the 
universe than have been discovered and recorded be- 
cause we do not know of the existence of such; or it 
would be Hke saying that there certainly are no in- 
telligent inhabitants of other worlds than ours because 
we have no knowledge of them. The difficulty of prov- 
ing a universal negative is understood by all logicians. 
Plainly we need to remember our limitations in dealing 
with this subject. We have only five physical senses 
through which to apprehend the material world: sup- 
pose we had ten: we might then learn twice as much 
about it as we are now able to do. 40 We have had only 
a brief personal experience by which to apprehend the 
realities of the spiritual world: suppose the range of 
our intellectual, ethical and religious life were doubled 
in length, depth and intensity: we surely might under- 
stand twice as much as we do now of the forces and 

40 Mr. Edison is quoted as having said : "There are lots of things 
besides radium we do not understand. These five senses of ours 
are pretty poor detectives. We perceive only a little that comes 
within the range of our senses. A thing drops below their level and 
we do not perceive it. Here and there, now and then, some one 
finds a new thing of which we did not dream the existence. In this 
room at this minute there are fifty wireless messages going 
through. Without instruments we cannot detect them." — Dr. 
Johonnot in The Universalist Leader, Mar. 12, 1910. 



84 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

laws and possibilities of the spiritual universe. So 
perhaps the relation of the soul to the body, and of 
both to the cosmical order, may be more fully revealed 
to us sometime, in the light of increased learning or 
when we shall have risen out of this present realm, than 
it is now. These are mere conjectures, to be sure; but 
they are entirely reasonable, and they prepare us to 
meet the chief difficulty which the problem of immor- 
tality appears to involve, viz., the question whether 
life is not simply a form or manifestation of material 
energy, and whether therefore the soul is not wholly 
dependent upon the body. 

It is at this point that scientific doubts come in. 
The biologist sees life always in connection with some 
physical organism; he knows nothing of it elsewhere; 
he dissects every tissue, microscopically examines every 
cell, analyzes every chemical compound, and never dis- 
covers any soul or spirit, in plant, animal or man, that 
he can gauge by any of his instruments or that re- 
mains after the organism is dissolved: therefore it is 
easy for him to believe that life is merely a form of 
material energy, a mode of motion, like a flame at the 
gas-jet, and that what we call the human soul is only 
a blossom on the tree of our purely physical nature. 
Moreover, he studies the workings of man's brain, and 
discovers a series of molecular changes occurring simul- 
taneously with the passing of ideas, thoughts or 
emotions through the mind; and then he wonders 
whether the molecular changes may not be the cause, 
and the only knowable cause, of such ideas, thoughts 
and emotions. This aspect of the case is well stated 
by Harry Emerson Fosdick as follows : 

"The modern laboratory study of the physical basis 
of personality most urges this query on us. There is 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 85 

no longer any doubt about the facts to be interpreted. 
A continuous layer of gray matter, varying in thick- 
ness from one-twelfth to one-eighth of an inch, and 
folded upon itself 'as one would crumple up a handker- 
chief,' forms the outer surface of our brains. No 
thinking is ever done by men without the cooperation 
of this delicate and highly organized nervous tissue. 
Each psychical function has some special lobe or con- 
volution in the gray matter, without which the corre- 
sponding mental activity is utterly impossible. In 
many cases the exact location of the sensitive surface, 
where the special forces of intellectual activity are 
carried on, is known to the psychologists. They know 
the area of the brain with which we hear, the area 
with which we see; they know the lobes by which we 
move our arms and legs, our lips and tongues and 
eyes ; they know the convolution where the function of 
speech is carried on and without which abstract think- 
ing is impossible. They can even distinguish the sur- 
face with which we hear words from the surface with 
which we read them. Nothing is clearer than that for 
every functioning of the minds of men there is a corre- 
sponding molecular activity in the gray matter of the 
brain. The conclusion at first seems inevitable that 
the mind is absolutely dependent on the physical struc- 
ture and is inseparable from it." 41 

Now with reference to these facts it is not for one 
to speak as a scientist who knows little of science; but 
it is certainly proper to observe that they have been 
duly considered by many eminent scholars, both scien- 
tists and philosophers, thoroughly competent to pass 
judgment upon them, who have not found in them an 
insuperable barrier to an earnest faith in immortality. 
41 "The Assurance of Immortality," pp. 77-79 (1914). 



86 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

Perhaps the words of Professor Tyndall are as weighty 
as any that have been uttered regarding this problem: 

"Granted that a definite thought and a definite molec- 
ular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do 
not possess the organ, nor, apparently, any rudiment 
of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a 
process of reasoning from one phenomenon to the 
other. They appear together, but we do not know 
why." "The passage from the physics of the brain 
to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthink- 
able." "The problem of the connection of the body 
and the soul is as insoluble as it was in the pre-scien- 
tific ages." 42 While this language does not commit 
Professor Tyndall to a belief in immortality, it clearly 
does not forbid such a belief ; and it goes far to warrant 
the emphatic remark of Mr. John Fiske to the effect 
that "the materialistic assumption that the life of the 
soul ends with the life of the body, is perhaps the most 
colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known 
to the history of philosophy." 

It appears, then, that the essential truth is simply 
this: As far as our experience goes in this world, the 
action of the mind and the action of the brain occur 
together; but no man knows enough of the ultimate 
nature of either mind or matter to tell why it must be 
so — we only know that it is so. To say that the action 
of the mind is produced by the action of the brain 
seems like "putting the cart before the horse," or like 
saying that the instrument which a telegraph operator 
uses in transmitting a message produces the thought 
which lies in his mind, instead of the thought and the 
action of his will producing the clicking of the machine. 
Indeed, here is precisely the vital difference between 

42 Quoted by Washington Gladden in "Burning Questions," p. 142. 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 87 

the materialistic and the spiritualistic construction of 
the problem : the former avers that the physical organ- 
ism produces what we call mind, soul, spirit, as a rose- 
bush produces the beauty and fragrance of its flowers ; 
while the latter contends that the physical organism 
is merely the temporary tenement, vehicle and instru- 
ment of the living spiritual personality, which may 
sometime surmount and transcend its earthly embodi- 
ment. It is the old question which Socrates debated 
long ago. Some one "compared man to a harp, and 
thought his intellectual and moral life the harmony 
that comes from the vibrating strings. Since, there- 
fore, he is essentially the instrument, which gives being 
to the music, the music cannot outlast the destruction 
of the harp. But Socrates insisted that man is neither 
harp nor harmony ; that he is a harper who plays upon 
the physical strings, dependent upon them for the 
quality of music he produces, but independent of them 
for his existence, since the player may leave one in- 
strument and find another." 43 

Seeing thus that we are not necessarily shut out 
from -a view of human nature which makes an intelli- 
gent belief in immortality possible, we are entitled to 
proceed to a consideration of some of the positive rea- 
sons which conspire to warrant it. These are numer- 
ous, as we should expect them to be if the faith were 
thoroughly tenable; we should look to see many indi- 
cations of its validity, rather than a few, as in all the 
sound generalizations of human thought, — like, for 
example, the stupendous theory of evolution. The 
spiritual temple of our hopes does not stand upon a 
single cornerstone, however precious, but upon a broad, 
firm, symmetrical foundation, composed of many stones 
43 "The Assurance of Immortality," p. 38. 



88 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

brought from diverse quarries, — from science, phi- 
losophy, religion, history, the teachings of prophets, 
saints and sages, and the inmost depths of the com- 
mon human heart. Some of the evidences adduced for 
the doctrine of our continued existence are direct and 
cogent, while others are collateral and corroborative; 
and it is in their correspondence and combination that 
we feel their full force. 

1. Let us begin with the familiar fact that the soul 
is not always so completely dependent upon the body 
as we sometimes assume. For we know that, frequently, 
a powerful intellect may dwell in a very frail physical 
organism, — like that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
for instance. We know, too, that a body may gradu- 
ally fail and be feeble for a long time, while yet the 
soul retains apparently all its vigor. Why then should 
its activity and potency cease utterly upon the further 
deterioration of its already crumbling house of clay? 
Furthermore we know that the body is continually 
changing, while the mind never loses its identity; I am 
the same person, and know myself to be such, that I 
was twenty years ago, notwithstanding every particle 
of matter in my body is probably different: why then 
may I not persist in my personality, preserving my in- 
dividuality intact, in and through that change which 
consists in merely dropping a worn-out, useless mass 
of matter? 44 

44 Bergson points out that it is entirely conceivable that life 
might have subsisted on earth, and may subsist elsewhere in the 
universe, under very different chemical conditions from those 
which our bodies exhibit. He says: "It was not necessary that 
life should fix its choice mainly upon the carbon of carbonic acid. 
What was essential for it was to store solar energy; but, instead 
of asking the sun to separate, for instance, atoms of oxygen and 
carbon, it might (theoretically at least, and, apart from practical 
dimculties possibly insurmountable) have put forth other chemical 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 89 

%. When we turn from the body to contemplate the 
mind alone, studying its workings and measuring its 
wonderful powers and capacities, we see that it is pro- 
jected on a vast scale and is evidently -fitted, intrins- 
ically, for a higher realm than this material world. Its 
thoughts run out far beyond the body and all its con- 
cerns ; they sweep the boundless regions of space and 
trace the stars in their courses ; they penetrate into 
the depths of the earth and learn the secrets of its 
history; they disentomb the buried nations and read 
anew the forgotten story of their greatness; they 
analyze the operations of the mind itself, divine its 
possibilities, and prove its kinship with the very Spirit 
of the universe. There is apparently no limit to its 
potential grasp and growth; knowledge may increase 
indefinitely; it is capable of eternal progress, so far 
as we can see. The same is true of the moral and spir- 
itual life: it is susceptible of unlimited development, 

elements, which would then have had to be associated or dissociated 
by entirely different physical means. And if the element charac- 
teristic of the substances that supply energy to the organism had 
been other than carbon, the element characteristic of the plastic 
substances would probably have been other than nitrogen, and the 
chemistry of living bodies would then have been radically different 
from what it is. The result would have been living forms without 
any analogy to those we know, whose anatomy would have been 
different, whose physiology also would have been different. ... It 
is therefore probable that life goes on in other planets, in other 
solar systems also, under forms of which we have no idea, in 
physical conditions to which it seems to us, from the point of view 
of our physiology, to be absolutely opposed. If its essential aim is 
to catch up usable energy in order to expend it in explosive ac- 
tions, it probably chooses, in each solar system and on each planet, 
as it does on the earth, the fittest means to get this result in the 
circumstances with which it is confronted. This is at least what 
reasoning by analogy leads to, and we use analogy the wrong way 
when we declare life to be impossible wherever the circumstances 
with which it is confronted are other than those on earth." — 
"Creative Evolution," pp. 255-256. 



90 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

provided opportunity be granted it for struggle and 
achievement. 

Now such fitness argues proper scope for the reali- 
zation of inherent possibilities. If you should find in 
a zoological garden a noble bird, with mighty wings 
and powerful talons and vicious beak and piercing eye, 
with a majestic stride and look, and having strength 
enough to kill and carry off a young wolf, you would 
say, This is not the only home for such a splendid 
creature ; its true habitat is the craggy mountains and 
the clouds of heaven; it is none other than the proud 
eagle — give him his freedom and let him soar to his 
native heights ! You feel that it would be almost a 
crime to keep him confined in a cage when he is so 
clearly fitted for a grander career. So it is with the 
human soul. If there is no upper air into which it 
may be sometime released, we can scarcely solve the 
puzzle of its marvelous aspirations, affinities and po- 
tencies. Surely it seems reasonable to believe that it is 
made for the spiritual heavens, and that the spiritual 
heavens await it! 

3. Again, this great faith is confirmed, in a two-fold 
way, by the teachings of evolution. To be sure, this 
is an over-worked term, but in the present instance its 
employment is justifiable. Evolution, certainly, has 
thrown more light upon the problem of man's existence 
and destiny than aught else save the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

And the first word of evolution touching the present 
subject reminds us that the universe has already pro- 
duced man. Here he is, such as he is, with all his pow- 
ers, capacities and tendencies, and we know him to be 
spiritual in his essential character. His existence here 
is the one great miracle. That in the midst of this ma- 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 91 

terial scene there should appear such a phenomenon 
as the human mind, with its powers of thought, emo- 
tion and volition, its capacities for knowledge, good- 
ness and happiness, and its possibilities for growth in 
all these respects, impresses one as the supreme marvel 
of the world. The persistence of this mentality, this 
human individuality, through and despite the dissolu- 
tion of its physical organism, does not seem half so 
strange as that it should ever have manifested itself 
in such an organism. Evolution warrants us in holding 
to the continuity of Nature's creative principle, and 
to the onward and upward trend of development. 

"A soul shall draw from out the vast, 
And strike his being into bounds, 

And, moved through life of lower phase, 
Result in man, be born and think, 
And act and love, a closer link 

Betwixt us and the crowning race 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 
On knowledge." 

The second word of evolution respecting this prob- 
lem reminds us of the appalling waste of spiritual 
energy that must occur if the individual be not some- 
how immortal. What is so precious as the mind of man 
and its products, knowledge, love, goodness, beauty, 
joy? What but these makes the world worth anything 
to us? And if all the spiritual energy throbbing for 
ages through human lives, and building the fabric of 
civilization, and transmuting the dust of the earth into 
learning and affection and holiness and happiness, is as 
ephemeral as the fragrance of a rose, and, though in 
the individual soul is 

". . . strong as the archangel's call" 
up to the very moment of death, is yet to perish abr 



92 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

solutely in the next moment, dissipating and extin- 
guishing itself like a skyrocket, — then surely it seems 
the most wanton, prodigal waste of priceless power in 
all the economy of Nature. It is not enough to say 
that the energy of the individual is transmitted to 
posterity; for much of the highest and richest form 
of such energy is often acquired after the individual 
has begotten his offspring, or may be possessed by one 
who never begets any children — like Bishop Phillips 
Brooks, for example. Can it be that Nature thus 
^ throws away her highest gains, and renders man him- 
self inferior in perdurance to the works of his own 
hand and mind? 

Richard Watson Gilder listened, one night in mid- 
summer, to a phonographic reproduction of the music 
of "Otello" sung by "a wonderful tenor" who had been 
"long dead." In describing it he says : 

"His soul it was that seized my soul, through his 
voice, which was as the very voice of sorrow ; 

"And then I thought : If man, by science and search- 
ing, can build a cunning instrument that takes over 
and keeps, beyond the term of human existence, the es- 
sence and flower of a man's art; 

"If he can re-create that most individual attribute, 
his articulate and musical voice, and thus the very art 
and passion which that voice conveys, 

"Why may not the Supreme Artificer, when the 
human body is utterly dissolved and dispersed, recover 
and keep forever, in some new and delicate structure, 
the living soul itself?" 45 

If all the talent, culture and personal worth em- 
bodied in the fifteen hundred lives that were lost with 

46 Gilder's "Complete Poems," p. 390; see also his noble poem, 
"Identity," p. 373. 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 93 

the Titanic, or the other fifteen hundred that have just 
gone down with the Lusitania, or the tens of thousands 
recently slain on European battlefields have ceased ut- 
terly and absolutely to exist, then it is impossible to 
see how there is anything in the spiritual realm corre- 
sponding to what the scientists call the conservation 
of energy in the physical domain. 

4. Another reason for believing in immortality is in 
the fact that it affords a satisfactory explanation of 
death. Death is the counterpart of birth; and if it is 
a good thing to be born, it is a good thing to die, when 
the right time comes — undoubtedly it is not good to 
die before the right time comes, any more than it is 
good to be prematurely born; so that suicide is a crim- 
inal spiritual abortion. But both birth and death ac- 
cording to nature are good, or else the order of the 
universe mocks us. Of what use, to what purpose, that 
so many myriads of millions of human beings should 
swarm into this world, and through strife and pain 
achieve some excellence that seems worthy of it all, 
only to go out in a night of impenetrable gloom? The 
only adequate explanation and justification of the 
whole stupendous process are to be found in the pre- 
sumption of a continued existence, somehow, for each 
individual soul, wherein what has been gained at such 
frightful cost shall be conserved and carried forward. 
Death thus becomes, not extinction, but transition; 
not the destruction of life, but its transplantation. 
Death then is really only another birth, — a great, new, 
wonderful birth, but as natural as our first birth, and 
perhaps no more mysterious. As Henry Ward Beecher 
remarked, "we go to the grave of a friend saying, 'A 
man has died' ; angels gather about him above saying, 
'A man is born !' " Surely such a faith solves the prob- 



94 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

lem of death so as not to belie the great principle of 
beneficence which makes the order of Nature both rea- 
sonable and just. 

5. A kindred thought is that immortality provides 
opportunity for completing the spiritual development 
begun in the earthly life. We are all painfully aware 
of incompleteness, in ourselves and in others. Even 
the best of men are sure that they have not accom- 
plished one-half of the work and growth of which they 
feel themselves capable ; and the worst of men, however 
perverted and distorted, undoubtedly have some germs 
of goodness within them which conceivably might be 
developed under favorable circumstances and with 
time enough. The view that this world is only a 
nursery for the fields of paradise, a primary school in 
the great university of life, a single stage in the vast 
process of development for each human soul, — this 
view meets the demand of our innate sense of justice 
for time and scope for the educative, disciplinary proc- 
esses of Divine Providence to work out their legitimate 
results for each and all. Our present life is not ade- 
quate to this end; indeed for uncounted multitudes the 
great, blessed task is scarcely begun here. But the 
story of each human life is a continued story, and is 
not finished when the end of the first chapter is reached. 
The theater isn't out when the curtain falls on the first 
act: the play is to go on; and ere it is completed we 
shall perhaps see that it is not a tragedy, but a grand 
drama issuing in the triumph of truth, virtue, love 
and joy! 

Nothing less than such a conception can stay our 
weary hearts, can make us patient to bear up and toil 
on amid the sin and sorrow of the world, can give us 
hope that the disappointed and hindered lives that have 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 95 

gone forth from us with their noble desires and capaci- 
ties unfulfilled shall in other scenes attain to the fru- 
ition of their ardent longings. And when we consider 
those that have been cramped, distorted, weakened and 
almost ruined by the destructive influences of wrong- 
doing, what can relieve the dark picture except the 
belief that they are still in the care and keeping of 
a Spiritual Providence that forever loves and chastens 
and purifies and redeems? An exalted faith in God as 
"the Father of the spirits of all flesh" is the eternal 
ground of our hope for each and every human soul, — 
the faith and hope 

"That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete." 

5. There are many other considerations which favor 
a belief in immortality, but limitations of space forbid 
more than the briefest mention of two or three of them. 

(1) The teaching of Jesus Christ concerning the 
subject, though extremely simple, is so weighty because 
of what he was that it is entitled to the very highest 
esteem; and for those who really understand and ap- 
preciate him it may be said that, even if all other evi- 
dences for their faith were to fail, they would still be- 
lieve in a future life because he believed in it. As a 
little child who cannot read a word may know that its 
parent or teacher sees a meaning in the printed page, 
so we who cannot understand all our own experiences 
may be sure that Jesus Christ had insight to perceive 
a higher, diviner significance in human life, and a 
more glorious issue of suffering and death, than we 
have ever dreamed of. Therefore we can echo the wise 
words of Dr. Theodore T. Munger: 



96 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

"When the clearest eyes that ever looked on this 
world and into the heavens, and the keenest judgment 
that ever weighed human life, and the purest heart 
that ever throbbed with human sympathy, tells me, 
especially if he tells it by assumption, that man is im- 
mortal, I repose on his teaching in perfect trust." 

(£) The well-attested phenomena of true spiritual- 
ism and the facts patiently developed by the Society 
for Psychical Research afford some confirmatory evi- 
dence for immortality which is not lightly to be re- 
garded. After making due allowance for the self-de- 
ception, fraud and chicanery that have infested this 
border-land, and for the inevitable cloud of uncer- 
tainty that must hover over it, there remains a large 
amount of evidence which it seems impossible to con- 
strue aright except by postulating the immortality of 
the soul and some contact or communication between 
disembodied and embodied spirits. While such evi- 
dence may not be sufficient to establish independently 
the great faith, it possesses a supplementary and cor- 
roborative character which gives it considerable value, 
and which may indeed become determinative as inves- 
tigation proceeds further. 

(3) Finally, the arguments for immortality may 
be summed up in the supreme fact that it accords with 
.the spiritualistic, as opposed to the materialistic, con- 
ception of construction of the universe. To illustrate : 
I hold in my hand a book, which consists of covers 
made of cloth and pasteboard, of leaves of paper, of 
paragraphs, sentences, clauses and words, with punc- 
tuation marks, all printed in ink; all these constitute 
the body of the book, which is visible, palpable, sub- 
stantial. Yet the real book is the thought which it 
contains, which is purely spiritual; and this soul of 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 97 

the book cannot be seen with the eye of flesh, or weighed 
or measured by any material standards. Even so the 
real universe, after all, is the spiritual universe; and 
God and man are living, spiritual, personal beings 
dwelling within and behind the material forms which 
constitute what we call the phenomenal universe. Un- 
der this conception it is easy to believe in the death- 
lessness of the spiritual part of man, which is the 
real man. Such a belief brings order out of chaos in 
our human world, and makes the Spiritual Providence 
of time and eternity intelligible, beneficent and hopeful. 

What is the value of this great faith? Clearly its 
value is at least three-fold. 

1. It adds dignity and worth to the human soul as 
nothing else could do. If man is not merely a creature 
of time and sense, but is truly a spiritual being "made 
in the image of God" and made for an eternal career, 
he is at once "crowned with glory and honor." Life 
instantly takes on a higher significance than any 
earthly scope can possibly give it; and earthly scenes 
and experiences derive their chief importance from the 
fact that they minister to the beginnings of a develop- 
ment of character, through education and discipline, 
through struggle and sorrow and suffering, through 
love and joy and holy aspiration, which is to be car- 
ried forward in the heavenly world. Surely a being 
whose life is projected on such a scale, for whose 
growth, tuition and perfection his earthly years are 
utterly inadequate, may be truly said to rank "but lit- 
tle lower than the angels." When this exalted con- 
ception is once thoroughly grasped, the slave may lift 
up his head, the criminal may lift up his heart, and the 



98 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

most wanton prodigal may say in penitence, "I will 
arise and go to my Father." 

2. The thought of immortality, especially as held 
by those who earnestly believe in the universal Father- 
hood of God, affords a comfort in bereavement which it 
is impossible to obtain from any other source. Hearts 
that bleed in their grief and pain when death snatches 
away their dear ones, perhaps in the very beauty of 
their youth, must suffer indeed even though their faith 
be strong: what, then, must be their anguish if they 
"sorrow as those who have no hope"? The darkness of 
the future makes the present desolate, and there is no 
relief for the lonely, yearning soul save in the con- 
viction 

"That life is ever lord of death, 
And love can never lose its own." 

When this conviction becomes intelligent, profound and 
vitally religious, it has power to sustain the drooping 
spirits of the saddest mourner, to give him strength 
and courage to go on, to make him patient, brave and 
uncomplaining, and to fill him alike with sympathy to- 
ward his afflicted fellows and with reverent trust in the 
Eternal Goodness. The hope of some possible reunion 
and a conscious companionship in love and joy, some- 
where, "behind the veil," — this hope is indeed "an an- 
chor to the soul, both sure and steadfast." Perhaps 
no other part of the Christian gospel has been more 
full of blessing in the past, or is more greatly needed 
at present. 

3. Likewise the faith of immortality has power to 
inspire to every good word and work in behalf of so- 
cial improvement. What can adequately inspire 
thereto except such an estimate of the dignity and 
worth of human nature as immortality implies, together 



WHAT ABOUT IMMORTALITY? 99 

with a firm belief that the spiritual gains of the indi- 
vidual and the spiritual increment of the succeeding 
generations shall be conserved and perpetuated beyond 
death? To lead cultivated men and women to bind 
themselves out to the service of the ignorant, the weak, 
the vile, the criminal members of society, some other 
motive than pity or self-protection or the interests of 
future generations is necessary; nothing less than a 
passionate appreciation of the inherent value of the 
human soul, begetting a love for the individual as a 
child of the living God, capable of being redeemed out 
of all imperfection, has ever been equal to this holy 
consecration in the past, or seems likely to be equal 
to it in the future. But the Christian view of human 
life, carrying the doctrine of immortality, engenders 
and in every way strengthens such appreciation and 
love. This in turn gives us the due sense of social re- 
sponsibility, and prompts us to throw ourselves utterly 
into the task of helping to work out the full salvation 
of humanity, here and hereafter. In this worthy task 
the individual achieves most surely his own best de- 
velopment; and if, having thus lived and served and 
grown noble, he is lifted at last into the light and joy, 
the opportunity and activity of a higher and eternal 
world, what grander outcome, whether personal or so- 
cial, could be conceived? Thus the thought of im- 
mortality, especially as held by those who believe ear- 
nestly in the universal Fatherhood of God, becomes the 
greatest spiritual dynamic of a progressive civilization. 
This is indeed "the power of an endless life." 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY AND ESSEN- 
TIAL CHRISTIANITY 



"The appealing personality of Christ has been, 
through all distortions, the regulative power and the 
source of unity in Christendom; and the more it stands 
out clear against the sky, with every cloud from be- 
hind and from before it swept away, the more single 
will be our apprehension of the genius of our religion. 

"It was the Providence of history that gave us Him: 
it was the men of history that dressed up the theory 
of Him: and till we compel the latter to stand aside, 
and let us through to look upon his living face, we can 
never seize the permanent essence of the gift.*' — James 
Martineau. 

Another parable set he before them, saying, The 
kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man that sowed 
good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy 
came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went 
away. But when the blade sprang up and brought 
forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. And the 
servants of the householder came and said unto him, 
Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence 
then hath it tares? And he said unto them, An enemy 
hath done this. And the servants say unto him, Wilt 
thou then that we go and gather them up? But he 
saith, Nay; lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye 
root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together 
until the harvest: and in the time of the harvest I will 
say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind 
them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat 
into my barn. — Matt. xiii. 24-30. 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY AND ESSEN- 
TIAL CHRISTIANITY 

THE present age is emphatically a harvest time in 
spiritual things. The ripening growths of 
the long past are being gathered and sepa- 
rated. Truth is being sifted from error, right from 
wrong, good from evil in more directions and on a 
larger scale than ever before. It is an era of culmina- 
tion, in which influences that have been at work for 
thousands of years are maturing their legitimate re- 
sults ; and since a tree is known by its fruits, the analyt- 
ical and critical processes of the modern mind are bent 
upon testing these fruits as thoroughly as possible. 
This attitude may seem to be skeptical and hostile, but 
it is really animated by the serious and noble purpose 
of discovering and liberating the truth, in order that 
whatever is false may be rejected and no longer darken 
the minds of men. 

There is no realm of our life to-day in which the 
working of this principle finds, or needs to find, more 
earnest exemplification than in that of religion. We 
often complain that there is a great deal of religious 
indifference abroad, but we need also to remember that 
there is a great deal of religious inquiry, research and 
reflection. Never did so many cults and faiths engage 
attention ; never were so many systems of worship and 
teaching brought forward and held up to the light; 
and never was the spirit of candor in studying these 
more widespread, profound and catholic than at the 
present moment. Men want to ascertain the truth 

103 



104 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

about divine things; they are looking far and near 
for it; they are hungry for conviction, assurance, cer- 
titude : but they are persuaded that no one form of re- 
ligion has ever contained "the whole truth and nothing 
but the truth" ; and because of the very preciousness 
of the high spiritual interests involved in the subject, 
they cannot afford to be uncritical in their testing and 
sifting of the world's religious products, however sym- 
pathetic they may desire to be. 

Christianity in particular is undergoing fresh and 
searching reconsideration to-day. For the Christian 
religion is deeply implicated in our whole Western civi- 
lization, and now that this civilization is on trial for 
its life, by reason of the gigantic cataclysm which is 
convulsing Europe, many are impelled to challenge the 
claims of this religion, to ask what is valid in them, 
and to scrutinize every argument adduced in their sup- 
port. Has Christianity been a colossal failure? are 
the defects of our civilization due to its inefficiency? 
or has it never been really tried on a sufficient scale to 
enable us justly to determine its value? 

Before we can answer these questions, we must first 
ascertain what is essential Christianity, and then see 
to what extent it has been rightly understood and fairly 
promulgated. The broaching of this two-fold query 
intimates, and it may be unhesitatingly asserted, that 
much that has come down to us under the sacred name 
of Christianity is not Christian at all, either in the 
sense of having been taught by Jesus Christ, or in the 
sense of being necessarily implied by his actual teach- 
ing, or in the sense of being reasonable and true. Jesus 
himself said, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, 
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he 
that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 105 

Even so we may declare, Not every one who cries 
"Christ!" "Christianity!" "the Church!" is truly Chris- 
tian; but he who grasps the central and fundamental 
truth and spirit of the Gospel, and then tries to live it 
out sincerely, consistently, and faithfully. If there 
have been many "false Christs," there have been more 
false followers of the true Christ. If there has been 
a sound core of genuine, valid, and holy teaching at the 
heart of Christianity, there has been built up around 
it an immense body of spurious doctrine, consisting of 
myth and legend, fancy and fable, pretension and im- 
posture, as well as a continuous admixture of foreign 
speculation from the beginning until now. Hence the 
task which has devolved upon our age, and which has 
increased in magnitude and thoroughness and value 
ever since the dawn of the Protestant Reformation, is 
that of severing truth from error, the kernel from the 
husk, in historical Christianity. This task, exceedingly 
important, is still far from accomplishment; but it is 
in process of being accomplished, in many ways, at 
many hands, in all branches of the Christian Church, 
— by patient scholars and thinkers, by humble teachers 
and preachers, and by a vast multitude of those whose 
only means of proving what is true and what false is 
in the great school of experience. 

But here we come to definitions and the question of 
standards. How shall we determine what is essential 
Christianity? what shall be our standard of measure- 
ment?, and who shall decide where doctors disagree? 
The answer is that it is simply a problem for the 
human mind to grapple with, and on which to employ 
all its resources ; that specifically it is primarily a 
problem of historical and literary criticism; and that 
whosoever has any contribution of true knowledge or 



106 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

valid reasoning or illuminating insight, which may 
throw the least bit of light upon the problem, is en- 
titled to be heard in seeking its solution. No scholar 
so humble and none so great, no disciple so inconspicu- 
ous and none so prominent, but that he may have part 
in this great sifting process of our age; and by just 
this sifting process, widespread, thorough, patient, pro- 
longed, we shall come to know the truth, and the truth 
shall make us free. There is absolutely no other way. 
No Ecumenical Councils, at the Vatican or elsewhere, 
no Papal Decrees, and no "Authority" in heaven or on 
earth can settle such a matter. It is simply a ques- 
tion for learning and thought and the cultivated con- 
sciousness of good men and the growing spiritual ex- 
perience of mankind. 

If this statement seems too strong, it at least is not 
made without due consideration of the opposite con- 
tention that the human mind is incompetent to de- 
termine divine truth for itself, and therefore needs 
some superhuman, authoritative teaching and guid- 
ance. But if the human mind is not able to determine 
what is true, how can it determine what is superhuman 
and authoritative? In the last analysis everything 
must rest back upon the soul of man, to which truth 
and right and love and beauty must make their appeal 
upon their own merit. An authority imposed may 
compel a certain acquiescence of the will, resulting in 
submission, obedience, outward compliance; but it can- 
not gain the inward assent of the reason, the sincere 
approval of the conscience, the profound sanction of 
the spirit, and the glad surrender of the affections 
unless these be freely won by the intrinsic excellence of 
what it offers. The alternative is clear: either there 
must be freedom, the freedom of the soul to judge for 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 107 

itself what is true and right, or there must be coercion 
in one form or another. If a coercive authority be 
claimed by any individual, official, or institution, who 
shall validate the claim? Mankind may need some 
authoritative teaching, but it must be of the sort which 
is not a substitute for thought, but an aid to thought. 
There is ultimately no escape from the peril and the 
glory of bringing every subject to the bar of the human 
mind and heart for the ascertainment, as far as finite 
powers of apprehension and comprehension can ascer- 
tain, what is true and right and beautiful and good. 
If we cannot exercise such powers and pass such judg- 
ment, we can do nothing but follow as we are led and 
do in all things as we are told. Is it only for this that 
the peerless soul of man was made? 

As to standards in the solution of our immediate 
problem, everything is to be brought first of all to 
the judgment-seat of Christ. That is to say, Jesus 
Christ, the Founder of Christianity, and universally 
conceded to be its true Representative, must be our 
primary and principal Criterion for determining what 
is essential Christianity. Not what Paul taught, or 
Peter or James or John, not what the Greek Fathers 
or the Latin Fathers inculcated, not what the historic 
Creeds have said or the Church has decided ; but rather 
what Jesus Christ was and said and did, when clearly 
known and correctly understood, — this is to be re- 
garded as the heart and soul of Christianity, as our 
true standard of measurement. The two phrases, 
"Back to Christ" and "the Christianity of Christ," 
have thus a definite and legitimate meaning; and so 
our next step is to find out as nearly as possible what 
the Christianity of Christ was. 

Here arises, to be sure, the further question of the 



108 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

credibility of our sources of information about Christ 
and his times and his teachings, together with the 
still further question of correct readings and interpre- 
tations. But these collateral issues, though very vital, 
cannot be properly discussed in the present chapter. 
Modern historical and biblical scholarship is dealing 
with them exhaustively, and the reader who desires may 
find abundant material bearing upon the points thus 
raised. Suffice it just now to assume the broad fact 
that the New Testament is our chief source of knowl- 
edge regarding Jesus Christ, and to maintain that the 
substance of the truth which it sets forth regarding 
him can be fairly grasped by the ordinary enlight- 
ened and candid person who is unwarped by prejudicial 
influences. If this were not so, the task of preaching 
"the gospel to every creature," the task of making 
"disciples of all nations," were surely a vain one. 

Now the picture which the unbiased reader of the 
Gospel Narratives obtains of Jesus is that of a noble 
Teacher, humble, reverent, heavenly-minded, claiming 
for himself no miraculous birth, no perfection, no in- 
fallibility even; going about doing good, inculcating 
high and holy lessons, instilling the most beautiful and 
blessed principles of life and conduct ever known among 
men, and himself exemplifying them with wondrous 
fidelity and sweetness ; calling about him twelve lowly 
men to be his disciples, companying with them, talking 
to them, educating them, and exerting his uplifting 
and sanctifying influence upon them; then, after con- 
vincing them that he was the true Messiah, the Christ, 
and leading them to an earnest acknowledgment of 
their faith in him as such, dying a cruel death and 
leaving his sublime cause in their hands, absolutely 
without any other organization than was naturally im- 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 109 

plied in their common spiritual experiences and their 
bond of union with him, their dear Lord and Master. 
In his brief public career Jesus performed numerous 
works of healing — precisely how many, or in what man- 
ner, or by what power it is impossible to tell. He 
showed a compassionate sympathy toward the poor, 
the unfortunate, and the oppressed, while severely cen- 
suring the hard-hearted, the cruel, the unjust, the hypo- 
critical; and he bore himself as a brave Reformer, 
through his high and searching teaching, with refer- 
ence to the official abuses connected with religion. He 
taught the doctrine of God's immanence and Father- 
hood, His nearness and dearness, His absolute holiness 
and love; he set no limits to the doctrine of man's 
sonship to God, thus logically implying its universality, 
and further implying the id^ea of universal human 
brotherhood; he set forth righteousness as the su- 
preme law of life, and love as its supreme motive; he 
taught men how to pray, how to trust and obey God, 
how to imitate and love Him, and how to love and 
serve one another ; he called them to repentance and 
forgiveness, to simplicity and sincerity, to worship in 
spirit and truth, and to the innocent joys of a pure 
and benevolent life ; and he pointed the human soul, 
tenderly and confidently, to the beautiful home in the 
immortal realms, but without giving particular infor- 
mation, without much argument, without philosoph- 
ical speculation. He simply affirmed the great car- 
dinal truths of his Message, and left them to make 
their own impression ; but he himself, in his own 
spirit, conduct and character, was their best exempli- 
fication — "he lived the precepts which he taught." 

Here, then, we have the gist of the Christianity of 
Christ, — a religion without priest, ritual, church, or 



110 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

formal creed; a religion of reverent gratitude, trust 
and love toward God, and of fraternal respect, sym- 
pathy, love and helpfulness toward man; a spiritual 
religion rather than a ceremonial or institutional or 
dogmatic religion; a religion of vital, quickening, in- 
spiring and sanctifying power over every soul that 
ever did really receive it, or that may receive it to-day. 
But now this essential Christianity, this Christian- 
ity of Christ, soon began to spread abroad, 
and as soon began to be elaborated and corrupted. 
It was taken up by the brilliant mind of St. Paul, 
who modified it in a peculiar and marked way; 
by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who gave 
it a somewhat different shape; by the author of the 
Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John, who al- 
tered it still further. It came into close and pro- 
longed contact with Greek Philosophy, in its various 
forms, and with Greek social usages, and was pro- 
foundly influenced thereby. 46 From all these and 
other associations it emerged in the statements of the 
great historic creeds — the Apostles Creed, the Nicene 
Creed, and the Athanasian Creed — with a metaphysical 
character deeply impressed upon ii>. It was thrown 
into the turbulent stream of world-politics in the Roman 
Empire, from which it suffered a pronounced seculari- 
zation. It was embraced by St. Augustine, who put 
the stamp of his mighty individuality upon it, with 
his ideas of a fallen race, a ruined world, and ever- 
lasting punishment, and of the Church as a City of 
Refuge. Then the Roman Catholic Church, rising in 
splendor, adopted the resulting compound, and carried 
its elaboration still further in the direction of estab- 

46 See the highly valuable work of the late Prof. Edwin Hatch 
on this subject, published as "The Hibbert Lectures for 1888." 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 111 

lishing her ecclesiastical absolutism, and for a thousand 
years imposed it upon the nations of Europe. Thus 
the Christianity which has come down to us is not the 
simple Christianity of Christ, but a complex system of 
doctrines, partly Judaic, partly Oriental, partly Hel- 
lenic, partly Latin, and only partly Christian in any 
strict sense. 

This complex system, which the present chapter calls 
Traditional Christianity, has contained such features 
as these : — The doctrine of the immaculate conception ; 
the doctrine of the virgin birth; the doctrine of the 
deity of Christ; the doctrine of the Trinity; the doc- 
trine of the fall of man in Adam; the doctrine of a 
time-probation; the doctrine of everlasting punish- 
ment ; the doctrine of the Devil ; the doctrine of purga- 
tory; the doctrine of the sacraments as an indispens- 
able means of Divine grace; the doctrine that the 
Church is the kingdom of God on earth, and is entitled 
to rule among men; the doctrine that the Pope is the 
Vicegerent of Christ, and as such is supernaturally and 
infallibly guided when acting in an official capacity; 
prayers to Mary the Mother of Christ, and prayers 
to the saints ; the adoration of relics ; and the imposi- 
tion of fasts, the confessional, and a celibate priest- 
hood. All this, however naturally it may have arisen 
and however useful it may have been, is not Christian 
at all, either in the sense of having been taught by 
Jesus Christ or in the sense of being legitimately im- 
plied by what he did actually teach. There is scarcely 
one of all the ideas here stated that can be found, with 
its customary import at any rate, in the Christianity 
of Christ as it is expressed in the Sermon on the 
Mount, the Parables, and the casual and characteristic 
utterances of the Master. Yet the doctrines or con- 



112 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

ceptions comprised in this strange compound have 
really constituted the bulk of the teaching that has 
passed under the name of Christianity, especially as 
far as the Roman Catholic Church has been concerned 
— and it is this great Church mainly that has given 
shape to our Western religion. 

To be sure, this doctrinal system was considerably 
modified by Protestantism, which rejected in particular 
about one-half (the second half) of the ideas above 
enunciated. But the rest of the system remained, and 
indeed was accentuated by Calvinism, and has furnished 
until recently the staple upon which the souls of the 
vast majority of Christians have been fed during 
nearly all the centuries. While the Roman Catholic 
Church has been the main channel and the chief pur- 
veyor of this whole stream of pseudo-Christianity, it 
has, nevertheless, flowed far and wide through other 
channels, and has overspread the world in the great 
movement of modern foreign missions. 

Now it may be a fair question whether this Tradi- 
tional Christianity has been, on the whole, salutary 
for the peoples among whom it has been promulgated; 
it is perhaps sufficient to know that it was probably 
inevitable under the circumstances ; but there can 
hardly be any question that it has been something very 
different from the simple, vital, pure, exalted teaching 
of the holy Founder of our religion. In this connec- 
tion the words of Professor Hatch, from the work 
above referred to, are not only pertinent but ex- 
tremely weighty because of his recognized scholarship 
and judicial insight. In his Introduction he says: 

"It is impossible for any one, whether he be a stu- 
dent of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of 
both form and content between the Sermon on the 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 113 

Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the 
Mount is the promulgation of a new law of conduct; 
it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the 
theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the 
ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; 
metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is 
a statement partly of historical facts and partly of 
dogmatic inferences ; the metaphysical terms which it 
contains would probably have been unintelligible to 
the first disciples ; ethics have no place in it. The one 
belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a 
world of Greek philosophers. 

"The contrast is patent. If any one thinks that it 
is sufficiently explained by saying that the one is a 
sermon and the other a creed, it must be pointed out in 
reply that the question why an ethical sermon stood in 
the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a 
metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christian- 
ity of the fourth century, is a problem which claims 
investigation. 

*jl>. jl». *j£ «fe «4t *& jl* 23/> 

yf» ^T 7J* *S* «T* * " n? 

"In investigating this problem, the first point that 
is obvious to an inquirer is, that the change in the 
center of gravity from conduct to belief is coincident 
with the transference of Christianity from a Semitic 
to a Greek soil. The presumption is that it was the 
result of Greek influence. It will appear from the Lec- 
tures which follow that this presumption is true." 47 

Toward the end of the twelfth chapter, after al- 
luding to another important factor, "the interposition 
of the State," he says: "The Church became, not an 
assembly of devout men, grimly earnest about living a 

47 "The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian 
Church," pp. 1 and 2. 



114 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

holy life — its bishops were statesmen; its officers were 
men of the world; its members were of the world, bas- 
ing their conduct on the current maxims of society, 
held together by the loose bond of a common name, 
and of a creed which they did not understand. In 
such a society, an intellectual basis is the only pos- 
sible basis. In such a society also, in which officialism 
must necessarily have an important place, the insist- 
ence on that intellectual basis comes from the instinct 
of self-preservation. But it checked the progress of 
Christianity. Christianity has won no great victories 
since its basis was changed. The victories that it has 
won, it has won by preaching, not Greek metaphysics, 
but the love of God and the love of man." 48 

In conclusion he says: "I have now brought these 
Lectures to a close. The net result is the introduction 
into Christianity of the three chief products of the 
Greek mind — Rhetoric, Logic, and Metaphysics. I 
venture to claim to have shown that a large part of 
what are sometimes called Christian doctrines, and 
many usages which have prevailed and continue to pre- 
vail in the Christian Church, are in reality Greek theo- 
ries and Greek usages changed in form and color by the 
influence of primitive Christianity, but in their essence 
Greek still. . . . 

"It is an argument for the divine life of Christianity 
that it has been able to assimilate so much that was 
at first alien to it. It is an argument for the truth of 
much of that which has been assimilated, that it has 
been strong enough to oust many of the earlier ele- 
ments. But the question which forces itself upon our 
attention as the phenomena pass before us in review, is 
the question of the relation of these Greek elements in 
48 Ibid., p. 349. 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 115 

Christianity to the nature of Christianity itself. The 
question is vital. Its importance can hardly be over- 
estimated. It claims a foremost place in the consider- 
ation of earnest men." 49 

Thus we clearly see that the distinction between Tra- 
ditional Christianity and essential Christianity is a per- 
fectly valid one. The beautiful teaching of Jesus 
Christ, which is our standard of measurement in spirit- 
ual things, is a far more simple, vital, moral, penetrat- 
ing, religious Message than the elaborate system of 
Greek and Roman theological, ritualistic and eccle- 
siastical doctrines prevailing during the long centuries 
could ever dream of being. The one was indeed a Gos- 
pel, a "good tidings of great joy," to comfort and 
guide and redeem heart-hungry men; the other was a 
scheme of ideas for intellectual disputants and a 
philosophical program for the builders of a mighty 
institutionalism. 

But now another aspect of the subject appears. The 
question obtrudes itself, whether there is any relation 
between this traditional Christianity, this pseudo- 
Christianity compounded mostly of Greek speculation 
and Roman statecraft, and the present frightful up- 
heaval in European society. Before dismissing the sug- 
gestion as wholly irrelevant, let us reflect a little. 

Jesus Christ was "meek and lowly in heart." He 
inculcated the great principle of mutual service, co- 
operation, brotherly love. He said to his disciples, 
when they were striving about positions of prefer- 
ment, "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exer- 
cise dominion over them, and they that are great exer- 
cise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among 
you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him 

49 Ibid., pp. 349-351. 



116 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among 
you, let him be your servant." 50 But when we look at 
Christian history as a whole, instead of seeing this 
spirit realized and embodied in all the practical af- 
fairs of social intercourse, in any particular nation 
or among the nations generally, we behold for the most 
part a civilization that has been built up on the basis 
of power, a civilization whose dream has been dominion, 
whose spirit has been ambition, and whose method has 
been competition; and traditional Christianity — insti- 
tutionalized, ecclesiastical, denominational, dogmatic 
Christianity — has been shot through and through with 
the self-same false conception and motive. Hence we 
have had an age-long cultivation of national patriot- 
ism narrowly conceived, racial antipathies, religious 
bigotries and strifes, and the whole mistaken ideal of 
the glory of supremacy in Church and State. Because 
the Christian Church itself has failed so largely to 
learn and practise the Master's great, simple principle 
of cooperative good-will, it has not been able to teach 
it to the nations ; and the nations have gone on build- 
ing up the fabric of power and dominion, each seeking 
to outstrip the other instead of helping the other, 
and ever and anon fighting one another instead of serv- 
ing one another. And now, all of a sudden, the stu- 
pendous pile collapses ; for what else than a collapse 
can we call it when a civilization fails to maintain it- 
self in justice, concord and prosperity, and exhausts 
itself in a universal orgy of destructiveness ? 

There was the greatest need at the beginning, and 
it has increased rather than diminished during the cen- 
turies, that the European peoples should be deeply 
imbued with the spirit of the social teaching of Jesus 

50 See Matt. xx:20-28; Mark x:35-45; Luke xxii:24-27. 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 117 

Christ, — the spirit and principle of mutuality, good- 
will, kindliness, friendliness, cooperation. For be- 
cause of their geographical limitations they were 
thrown into close contact with one another, and because 
of their racial differences it was inevitable that misun- 
derstandings and strained relations might easily arise. 
All these conditions have been aggravated by the in- 
crease of population, the multiplication of the means 
of intercourse, and the stirring of new creative energies 
in every modern nation. Under such circumstances 
the only possible way for people to live together is to 
live in amity and mutual helpfulness ; and if the Chris- 
tian Church could have seen this and taught it and 
exemplified it, sincerely and faithfully, from first to 
last, who can doubt that Europe might have been 
spared a hundred wars and saved from this most re- 
cent and most terrible "abomination of desolation"? 
Jesus wept over Jerusalem, saying, "If thou hadst 
known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things 
which belong unto thy peace ! but now are they hid 
from thine eyes." 51 Even so a thoughtful believer in 
him to-day, contemplating the tragic history of these 
nineteen centuries, may well mourn over the blindness 
and fatuousness of so many of his professed followers, 
over their failure to understand the plain, practical 
implications of his social Gospel, and over their con- 
sequent inability to represent him truly before a needy 
world. 

It is a striking fact that in the present dire extrem- 
ity of Europe the Christian Church is apparently pow- 
erless. She lifts no effectual voice to stay the strife; 
she scarcely even ventures to repeat the Master's word 
— "Put up again thy sword into its place : for all they 
51 Luke xix:41, 42. 



118 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

that take the sword shall perish with the sword" ; she 
simply does not count as a factor in the case. Why? 
Is it partly because her own skirts are not clean, be- 
cause her own soul has been, all too often, full of the 
spirit of ambition and strife, because she has loved 
power and sought dominion, because she has coveted 
"all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" ? 
Oh, if the Christian Church could only have taught and 
practised a purer Christianity, the Christianity of 
Christ, instead of that divisive traditional Christian- 
ity which has so largely usurped its place, how differ- 
ent might have been the history of the last nineteen 
hundred years! 

But of course it is vain to dwell upon what might 
have been, except for the sake of learning what ought 
to be now. And it is plain now that if, upon the ruins 
which the great war leaves in Europe, a new civiliza- 
tion is to be builded, it must be erected upon a new 
basis, which is yet the old, simple basis of the Gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ, — the principle of mutuality, good- 
will, brotherly-kindness, cooperation. Else it will not 
be a new civilization, but a repetition of the age-long 
story of distrust, dislike, jealousy, bigotry, injustice, 
cruelty, revenge, — the evil spirit in the heart whence 
come all fightings in the last analysis. Not ambition, 
power and dominion, but meekness, love and mutual ser- 
vice, — this is the social genius of the Christianity of 
Christ; and it will lead as surely to the increased pro- 
duction of wealth, prosperity, peace and happiness as 
the opposite principle leads to strife. If we are to pros- 
per at all, really and permanently, we must prosper to- 
gether; and the world has grown at length to be so 
essentially one, so truly a single great family of na- 
tions, feeling its unity, its solidarity, as it never did 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 119 

before, that this word "together" must henceforth com- 
prise all mankind. Each nation will thrive best, in the 
long run, where other nations thrive with it — just as 
a business man whose customers are making money will 
himself make money by reason of his relations with 
them. If the people of the United States are to have 
increasing trade with the people of South America, it 
is to the interest of the former that the latter should 
be prosperous. So it is everywhere, when looked at 
in a large way: the welfare of each is bound up with 
the welfare of all; cooperation should supersede com- 
petition, men should help one another instead of re- 
stricting one another. Yet this is only an economic 
statement of the spiritual truth of brotherly love which 
Jesus Christ put into the very foundation of his so- 
cial teaching. 

If, then, a new civilization is to be builded and 
must be builded upon this truly Christian basis, the 
task of the Christian Church for the new age is per- 
fectly clear: It must teach men, individually and so- 
cially, this great, simple lesson of cooperative good- 
will, and must practise that teachvng in spirit and in 
truth. It must give over all its old dreams of power 
and dominion and glory ; it must no longer seek to rule 
men or nations, but must seek simply to serve them; 
and it must instil everywhere, and exemplify always, 
the love which alone makes mutual helpfulness a holy 
joy. Upon no other basis can a better human society 
be established than that which is passing through the 
agonizing conflicts of the present hour. 

It is undoubtedly true that, in the readjustments 
and reconstructions of the immediate future, the State 
in every land must bear the brunt of the labor. No 
longer may it fall to the Church to shape political poli- 



120 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

cies and practical programmes. But it is the high 
function of the Church to inculcate ideas and formulate 
ideals out of which practical measures may grow in 
due time. The Church can be the Teacher and Helper 
of the State, the one great, spiritual Ally that can 
speak and work with the holiest of sanctions. In such 
a service the Church can be the powerful co-laborer of 
every other educational agency, — the school, the col- 
lege, the university, the press ; and all working to- 
gether, they can lead the nations out of darkness into 
light, out of hatred and strife into love and peace. 

But before the Christian Church can well perform 
her part of this important ministry, she must purify 
her own message and renew a right spirit within her 
soul. She must discard some of the hoary errors of 
traditional Christianity, accumulated by a varied proc- 
ess of accretion during the long centuries, and return 
to essential Christianity, the Christianity of Jesus 
Christ; she must begin to heal her own divisions by 
seeking the deeper unities, "the unity of the spirit in 
the bond of peace" ; and she must pray continually for 
a humble and a contrite heart, because her own follies 
and sins are partly responsible for the frightful 
troubles which are now shaking the earth. With such 
a purified message and such a chastened spirit, the 
Christian Church may hope once more to speak truly 
to a needy world in the name of the crucified Redeemer, 
and the long-suffering world — weary, bleeding, yearn- 
ing — will hear and heed and be saved. 

Finally, regardless of the European war, the need 
for such a sifting and cleansing of our inherited re- 
ligion as is here indicated is rendered more urgent by 
a certain broad missionary consideration. Christian- 
ity is offering itself to the entire world to-day, and 



TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY 121 

practically the entire world lies open to it. But un- 
less the form of teaching that shall go forth among the 
nations be purer and truer than that which has pre- 
vailed since the second and third centuries, Christian- 
ity will not be an unmixed blessing to the various races 
of the earth. And it might be such a blessing. The 
Christianity of Christ, disentangled from the pseudo- 
Christianity of the creeds and the principal churches, 
would prove indeed a holy inspiration, a baptism of 
spiritual power, to the burdened souls of men every- 
where. The human race in all lands unwittingly waits 
for its message of light, hungers for its bread of life, 
longs for the quickening which its simple story is able 
to impart. But in place of all this the Father's chil- 
dren have been given, mainly, the adulterated mixture 
which has been herein summarized and characterized 
under the term "Traditional Christianity." It is im- 
possible to believe that, in this guise, Christianity can 
continue permanently to win its way. The growing in- 
telligence of mankind will either purify it or reject it. 
Therefore no service which the true friends of Chris- 
tianity and humanity can perform at the present time 
can be more fraught with spiritual blessing, in the long 
run, than that of thoroughly purging traditional Chris- 
tianity, eliminating historic corruptions, and thus re- 
leasing essential Christianity, the Christianity of Christ, 
for its beautiful mission among the nations. Let the 
tares be separated from the wheat before the harvest 
shall be reaped and threshed out, to be again sown 
broadcast in the fair fields of the whole wide world! 
Then shall Jesus Christ, with his simple and heavenly 
Gospel, really come in power and great glory; and be- 
fore him shall be gathered all nations, and from him 
they shall receive, in deed and in truth, "the words of 
eternal life"! 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 



"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 
good-will toward men." — Luke ii. 14. 

"Whosoever would become great among you, shall 
be your minister; and whosoever would be first among 
you shall be your servant.** — Matt. xx. 27. 

"For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use 
not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but 
through love be servants one to another." — Gal. v. 13. 

"She {the Church) should frankly recognize that de- 
mocracy paves the way to what is precisely the highest 
expression of her Catholicism. When she does so, then 
democracy will begin to yearn after the Church which 
continues that Gospel-message wherein democracy finds 
its own remote but authentic origm." — "The Pro- 
gramme of Modernism," p. 129. 

"The Church will not shape political platforms nor 
formulate economic programmes. But she will brmg 
her thought and her catechism to bear upon the work 
of so tempering the wills of men that they shall be 
heroic and great-hearted citizens of the free common- 
wealth." — Professor Henry S. Nash. 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 

THESE brief quotations epitomize some of the 
principal truths which lie at the heart of Chris- 
tianity and democracy. The joyful recogni- 
tion of God over all; peace and good-will among men; 
the greatness of mutual service rather than of power 
and dominion; the privileges and responsibilities of 
freedom ; love as the chief motive in social conduct ; and 
the building of strong characters that shall invest their 
virtues in the efficient maintenance of a free and just 
State, — these are cardinal conceptions of the Chris- 
tian religion as it is working out amid the ideals of 
modern democratic institutions ; and they imply the 
profound truth that Christianity and democracy are 
but two phases of one vast movement in human life 
which means welfare alike for the individual and for 
society, on both the spiritual side and the material 
side. This essential unity is not always understood, 
either by churchmen or by statesmen; but its due ap- 
preciation will reconcile many conflicting aims, will give 
sacred meanings to a multitude of ordinary labors, and 
will enlarge our hopeful outlook for the continued prog- 
ress of mankind. 

It is a fact that Christianity deals mainly with 
spiritual concerns. It regards man primarily as a 
spiritual being, a child of the Eternal Father, and there- 
fore an heir of immortality. It contemplates all his 
interests from this high vantage-ground, and guages 
the accidents and incidents of time and circumstance 
by the scale of infinity, seeing them in the broad sweep 

125 



126 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

of a process of development that is not wholly con- 
fined to this world. Accordingly it lays chief em- 
phasis upon the things that endure, the things of abid- 
ing worth, and attaches less value to those things 
which perish with the using. It exalts true principles, 
pure motives, holy ideals, and that inner knowledge and 
love of divine truth, that harmony of soul with the 
Spirit of the living God, which Jesus called "eternal 
life," — beginning here, but lasting forever. 

But true Christianity approaches man as a being 
on earth, amid earthly conditions and sustaining 
earthly relationships. He is born here, he dwells here 
at least for a time, and here must be the first sphere of 
his activities and attainments. In the concrete af- 
fairs of every-day life in this world — in the relation- 
ships of the family, the community, the nation; in 
marrying and begetting, in buying and selling, in com- 
manding and serving; and amid toil, poverty, suffering 
and sin, disease and vice and crime; in the face of ca- 
lamities and social tumults and the mystery of death — 
in the midst of all these we live, and must learn, and 
must remember that we are children of God and broth- 
ers one of another. Such was the point of view and 
the constant teaching of Jesus Christ. If his professed 
followers have sometimes forgotten this fact, and have 
made his religion excessively other-worldly, and have 
imposed upon its devotees requirements which he never 
dreamed of, "teaching for doctrines the command- 
ments of men," it has not been his fault. He himself 
was always perfectly sane, perfectly human, perfectly 
practical. His Gospel was a message of glad tidings 
with reference not only to the future life, but pri- 
marily and profoundly to the present life. 

On the other hand, democracy has to do mostly with 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 12*7 

temporal affairs. It occupies itself mainly with earthly 
interests. It is primarily secular in its aims and 
methods. It seeks the well-being of the individual and 
of society here in this world, without much thought of 
anything lying beyond ; and while it is reverent toward 
the idea of a Supreme Ruler of the universe, it does 
not necessarily imply this — it is conceivable that de- 
mocracy might exist and be highly efficient without 
such a conception. Conversely it is entirely possible 
for men to believe in God with sincerity and with a ven- 
geance, and yet maintain an aristocracy or an oligarchy 
of a cruel tyranny — alas ! how often in history has such 
been the case ! 

Still it is true that democracy is naturally favorable 
to all spiritual interests, — to education, art, culture, 
philanthropy , religion, and universal good- will. Whether 
we regard it as a frame of government or a state of 
mind, a mechanism of social order or a disposition of 
the thoughts of many hearts, it is instinctively the 
friend of every generous impulse, every liberal policy, 
every high aim, the development of every noble capac- 
ity or power in human nature. Therefore democracy 
is not repressive, but stimulative; it does not discour- 
age effort, but encourages it, — encourages thought, re- 
search, experiment, the bold initiative of the individ- 
ual, the new cooperation of the social group. Conse- 
quently under its ample aegis there is an upspringing of 
a great variety of voluntary activities which result in 
strengthening or refining the human mind, and in fer- 
tilizing civilization with increasing learning, skill, 
beauty, benevolence, and virtue. Simply by affording 
the natural man scope to work out the latent good 
that is in him, democracy becomes the promoter of his 
welfare and progress by as much as it lies within him 



128 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

to advance himself; and to one who believes in the 
dignity and high potentiality of human nature, rather 
than in its total depravity, democracy becomes a syn- 
onym of hope for the slow but sure elevation of the 
race. 

This agreement between Christianity and democracy 
will appear more clearly if we analyze a little further 
the real objects of each. What is it that Christianity, 
the Christianity of Christ, seeks for man? and what 
does democracy seek for him? A brief but plain answer 
will be helpful. 

It is commonly taught that the grand object of 
Christianity is "the salvation of souls" ; and it is com- 
monly thought that such salvation means, not merely 
deliverance from the power of sin, but rescue from the 
control of the Devil and the terrors of a future hell, 
and the securing of an abundant entrance into heaven. 
Although there is some truth in this form of state- 
ment, there is a much better way of putting the case. 
True Christianity, the Christianity of Christ, seeks 
the welfare of man as a spiritual being, the child of the 
Eternal God. Therefore it seeks his growth or devel- 
opment or cultivation or education or discipline in the 
following principal qualities: 

Reverence, gratitude, trust and love toward God; 
consideration, honesty, sympathy, love and helpfulness 
toward man; purity of heart, integrity of character, 
freedom of spirit ; and that social harmony, prosperity 
and happiness which grow out of peace and good-will. 
To realize these qualities is to be "saved," i. e., to be 
"made whole," and is the truest preparation for heaven, 
while establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth. 

Likewise the grand object of democracy is the indi- 
vidual and social welfare, but somewhat more narrowly 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 129 

conceived, as relating mainly to earthly interests. True 
democracy seeks principally the maintenance of these 
great elements of such welfare : 

Order, justice, liberty; and it believes that, with 
these, men will exercise intelligence and virtue and some 
benevolence, and will achieve prosperity and happiness. 
It trusts generously in the native capacity and ability 
of the individual to do for himself, to take care of 
himself and those dependent upon him, to direct and 
govern himself with increasing wisdom, honor toward 
others, and regard for the common weal; and it leaves 
him entirely free to pursue such forms of culture and 
pleasure and religion as he may see fit, only insuring 
that he do not abridge the corresponding rights of his 
fellow men. 

We may sum up these two statements by saying that 
Christianity seeks to establish among men Reverence, 
Love, Righteousness, Freedom, Peace; while democ- 
racy seeks to establish Order, Justice, Freedom, leav- 
ing other things to spring up as they may. 

Thus it appears that the two qualities or principles 
here belonging m common to Christianity and democ- 
racy are Righteousness and Freedom, or Justice and 
Freedom, meaning the same. Christianity seeks to es- 
tablish among men righteousness and freedom; democ- 
racy seeks to establish among men justice and freedom. 
Christianity adds reverence, love and peace ; democracy 
adds social order. Hence it is clear that, as far as it 
goes, democracy is in profound harmony with Chris- 
tianity; only that Christianity goes farther, includes 
more, seeks more, means more. But both grow out of 
our common human nature, both recognize the inher- 
ent worth and ability of man, and both aim to help 
man climb up to the noblest heights of attainment that 



130 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

may be possible to him. 

But here we must be reminded that Christianity 
works chiefly within, while democracy works chiefly 
without. The one quickens, inspires, invigorates, 
cheers, comforts, reproves, corrects, cleanses, and sanc- 
tifies the inner life of the human soul, and so sets it free 
from imperfection and wrong desire and evil purpose, 
and makes it resolute to do right, to seek good, to obey 
the will of God. The other affords protection, op- 
portunity, scope and encouragement for the outward 
exercise of man's powers, and so opens the way for his 
tendencies to work themselves out, for his talents to 
increase themselves, for his nature to flourish and grow 
and bear fruit. Both give freedom: but the freedom 
of the one is inner, vital, spiritual; while that of the 
other is external, social, legal: and yet both kinds of 
freedom are necessary. Likewise both Christianity and 
democracy establish righteousness : but the righteous- 
ness of the former is that of a soul inwardly set to 
love and do the right of its own free will and accord; 
while that of the latter is often obliged to be con- 
tent with external constraints, restraints, and conform- 
ity to the decrees of organized society: and yet both 
kinds of righteousness are necessary. 

From all this it is evident that Christianity and de- 
mocracy belong together, and are needed to work to- 
gether in this world. True Christianity is democratic 
in the most thorough sense of the term; and true de- 
mocracy, as far as it goes, is in fundamental accord 
with Christianity's estimate of man, its service of him, 
and its hope for him. Therefore the sincere believer 
in democracy is imbued with a religious spirit, and sym- 
pathizes with the words of Whittier in which he per- 
sonifies and addresses this Angel of liberty and love : 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 131 

"Bearer of Freedom's holy light, 

Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod, 
The foe of all which pains the sight, 
Or wounds the generous ear of God! 

"Beautiful yet thy temples rise, 

Though there profaning gifts are thrown; 
And fires unkindled of the skies 
Are glaring round thy altar-stone. 



"The generous feeling, pure and warm, 

Which owns the rights of all divine, — 
The pitying heart — the helping arm, — 
The prompt self-sacrifice, — are thine. 

"Beneath thy broad, impartial eye, 

How fade the lines of caste and birth! 
How equal in their suffering lie 
The groaning multitudes of earth! 



"By misery unrepelled, unawed 

By pomp or power, thou seest a man 
In prince or peasant, — slave or lord, — 
Pale priest, or swarthy artisan. 

"Through all disguise, form, place, or name, 

Beneath the flaunting robes of sin, 
Through poverty and squalid shame, 
Thou lookest on the man within; 

"On man, as man, retaining yet, 

Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim, 
The crown upon his forehead set, — 
The immortal gift of God to him." 

"Therefore, too, Christianity, true Christianity, is 
the friend and ally of democracy. It believes in de- 
mocracy because it believes in man; it believes in lib- 
erty because it believes that, given a fair chance, the 
good in man will mount to supremacy over evil and 
will lift him to a worthy life. It trusts man to think 
for himself because it believes that he can find the truth 
for himself, can know the truth, will love the truth, and 



l£& MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

in time will be won to obey the truth. It gives man a 
large opportunity for independent action because it 
believes that only so can he develop the latent good 
that lies within him; and its restraints would be re- 
served for the wanton and powerful wrongdoer. It 
bids every man remember that he is a child of God, and 
therefore to lift up his heart, to stand upon his feet, 
and to walk uprightly. 

Now if the foregoing considerations and reasonings 
are valid, a few important deductions follow: 

1. Those types of Christianity, those forms of Chris- 
tian administration, which are not in sympathy with 
democracy, which distrust man and discourage liberty, 
are not truly Christian. Such preeminently (one is 
compelled regretfully to say it) is Roman Catholicism, 
whose authoritative deliverances against freedom have 
been prominently before the world since the condemna- 
tion of "Americanism" by Pope Leo XIII and the more 
severe condemnation of "Modernism" by Pope Pius X. 
Without lengthy argument, the following paragraph 
from Professor Walter Rauschenbusch's "Christianity 
and the Social Crisis" bears upon the point very 
forcibly : 

"The Catholic Church by its organization tends to 
keep alive and active the despotic spirit of decadent 
Roman civilization in which it originated. Even to- 
day, when the current of democracy is flowing so pow- 
erfully through the modern world, the Roman Church 
has a persistent affinity for the monarchical principle 
and an instinctive distrust of democracy. The chronic 
difficulty encountered by the Latin nations of Southern 
Europe and Southern America in making free institu- 
tions work, is probably not due to any inefficiency of 
blood or race, but partly to clerical interference with 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 133 

government, and partly to the anti-democratic spirit 
constantly flowing out from the Roman Church into 
the national life of the peoples under her control. If 
we ask why the Church failed to reorganize society 
on a basis of liberty and equality, we have here one of 
the most important answers." 52 

To be out of sympathy with democracy is to be out 
of sympathy with the deepest and strongest social 
aspiration of the present age. This aspiration is 
manifesting itself, indeed, in various and often-seem- 
ingly contradictory outward forms, called by differ- 
ent names, such as Socialism, Collectivism, Commun- 
ism, Nationalism, Trade Unionism, Cooperation, So- 
cial Democracy, Republicanism, Feminism, Nihilism, 
Anarchism, and what not; but, back of them all, the 
inner, vital spirit of humanity to-day, in every pro- 
gressive section of the world, is a mighty longing for 
social betterment. It may seem selfish, gross, mate- 
rialistic, and doubtless frequently is so ; but it is sin- 
cere and earnest, and contains the promise and po- 
tency of a higher civilization for uncounted millions of 
mankind. It is the one great hopeful fact among a 
thousand dismal facts in our struggling, suffering 
world. The hearts of men everywhere are yearning 
for a freer, richer, happier life : this is the secret force 
underneath our social unrest, our agitations, our de- 
nunciations of the existing regime, even our violence. 
With increasing intelligence it becomes plain that a 
better life for the multitudes is possible; then the con- 
science feels that it ought to be realized; and then the 
resources and forces of humanity begin to be mobilized 
to fight for such a realization. We are in the midst 
of this manifold and tremendous process, the essential 
62 Work cited, p. 192. 



134 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

nature of which is the uplook and uplift of the whole 
race. 

To be out of touch with such a vast movement, to 
antagonize it, to misunderstand it even is to be un- 
christian; for Christianity is profoundly humanita- 
rian, seeking the welfare of mankind, the salvation of 
the individual and of society, which certainly means 
fulness of life — health, freedom, comfort, intelligence, 
virtue, happiness — for all God's children. To be so 
blinded by the interests of an established order, either 
of thought or of administration, — in other words, to 
be so absorbed in maintaining an existing traditional- 
ism, — as to miss or misread the workings of the Di- 
vine Spirit in the souls of men, even when they are 
numbered by tens of thousands, — what is all this but to 
be like those rulers in Jerusalem who rejected Jesus 
and caused him to lament against the Holy City in 
the sad words of his terrible indictment, "thou knewest 
not the time of thy visitation"? Yet such, unfortu- 
nately, is the attitude of official Roman Catholicism, 
as indicated by its almost savage hostility to Modern- 
ism. It professes to be the only true Representative 
of the Divine Government on earth, the only true 
Guardian and Guide of the human soul: yet it fails to 
recognize the voice of God in the voice of the people, 
or to feel the prompting of the Divine Spirit in the 
world-wide aspiration of the human spirit. It de- 
nounces Socialism and Democracy equally, and Mod- 
ernism seems especially hateful to it because it shares 
the same secret motive, the same informing, liberaliz- 
ing purpose, and is the latest expression of a fearless, 
progressive mind within the Roman Church itself. But 
in fact Socialism, Democracy and Modernism are 
nearer to the Christianity of Jesus Christ than this 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 135 

kind of official Roman Catholicism can possibly be; 
and the truth which lies at the heart of these three 
manifestations of human aspiration will as surely pre- 
vail over this type of Catholicism as the light of knowl- 
edge must ultimately prevail over the darkness of igno- 
rance. The power of an enlightened and free religious 
faith, coupled with that of a just and liberal social 
order, will overcome the obstruction offered by the 
enormous framework of inherited Medievalism; and 
thus the way will be prepared for the spiritual teach- 
ing of Jesus, in conjunction with popular government, 
to accomplish the social development for which the 
world waits. 

2. Christianity and democracy, by working to- 
gether, can build up a true kingdom of heaven on 
earth; but neither can do it alone. There is slight 
ground for believing in the power of democracy sin- 
gle-handed to redeem society; nor is it easy to see how 
Christianity can make full proof of its ministry with- 
out producing eventually a democratic society as a 
means of realizing some of its noblest ends. But it is 
entirely probable that Christianity, working (so to 
speak) on the inside of man, and true democracy, 
working on the outside, can and will help men to live 
like true sons of God, and can and will transform this 
world into a veritable paradise. 

Christianity, whatever else or more it may be, is 
essentially a spirit of life, — reverent, believing, hope- 
ful, loving. When the human soul is quickened by this 
spirit, for which it has a natural affinity, it awakes to 
new activities and experiences a new expansion. 
Thought increases, aspiration ensues, knowledge grows, 
endeavor is heightened and enlarged, and the whole 
inner world of the spiritual interests and affections is 



136 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

enriched. The truth which is presented in the life and 
teaching of Jesus Christ is thus germinal, and when 
it is planted in the mind and heart of man, it springs 
up and bears fruit, if not unhappily destroyed by 
overpowering adverse influences. This is the per- 
petual miracle of Christian history, — the spiritual 
quickening into newness of life of dull and perverse 
human souls. It is like the vitalizing and fructifying 
of a soggy soil by sowing into it the seeds of those 
grains or grasses which possess the power of lightening 
and fertilizing the ground even while they grow. 
When once "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" 
really impregnates the soul of a man, it not only 
makes him that he shall be neither barren nor unfruit- 
ful, but it continually increases his productive capacity 
in all good things. So Christianity makes its appeal 
primarily to the inner life rather than to the outward; 
it addresses its truth to the mind and heart of the in- 
dividual, to the inmost soul; and it trusts implicitly 
that its holy seed, implanted thus, will sometime germi- 
nate and come to fruitage because the spiritual forces 
of God's world are its natural allies. 

But then the quickened, expanding soul begins im- 
mediately to make over its external organism, to build 
more stately mansions for itself. The changing, im- 
proving inner life incarnates itself in a better and still 
better outward order. A purified soul wants a purified 
abode; a refined soul demands refined surroundings; an 
honest man will have an honest social order in so far 
as he can bring it about. Inevitably, therefore, the 
good life within works outward; and a man who has 
caught the divine vision and the divine purpose will 
not fail nor be discouraged till he has set justice in 
the earth. Hence it comes to pass that mankind is 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 137 

forever reconstructing its external institutions — its 
creeds, philosophies, philanthropies and governments, 
whether secular or sacred — in accordance with its pro- 
gressive inner conceptions and convictions. A man 
with a Christian mind and heart cannot sit down and 
sit still in an un-Christian world, a world full of in- 
justice, impurity, ignorance, disease and needless mis- 
ery : he simply must rise up and help make things over, 
until the outward order shall reasonably harmonize 
with the inner ideal. 

Now if Christianity may be said to represent the 
inner, spiritual half of this great process of human 
development, surely democracy may be fairly claimed 
to represent — as well at least as any word or move- 
ment which our age affords — the external, social half 
of it. We may confidently believe that together, while 
neither can do it alone, they can and will establish the 
reign of a true, universal human brotherhood. De- 
mocracy is the free soul in action, seeking its own wel- 
fare, and leading to cooperation with other free souls 
because the true welfare of one man is essentially the 
true welfare of all men. Such voluntary cooperation 
becomes the means by which the external order of 
society is made over, trusting implicitly to the inher- 
ent potency of truth and right to persuade people. 
Critics of the democratic movement allege that the 
freedom which it involves is prone to end in license, 
wantonness, rampage, destructiveness ; and this is al- 
ways a possibility, even a liability; but it is not neces- 
sarily or generally a probability. Such critics forget 
that freedom is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways: 
if sometimes it takes the form of crass individualism, 
undue self-assertion, and the disregard of the rights of 
others; on the other hand it just as naturally and 



138 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

surely takes the form of enlightened association, mu- 
tual endeavor, and the combining of the forces and 
resources of many for the common good. It is a pure 
assumption that men will not, ordinarily, seek their 
common weal by common effort. Precisely such a unit- 
ing of brains and hearts and hands is what society is 
continually exhibiting in a thousand forms of asso- 
ciation, — in business, in philanthropy, in religion, in 
politics; and everywhere such associated action tends 
to move from the lower plane to the higher, and from 
the lesser interest to the greater ; in other words, social 
life broadens and heightens with the progress of en- 
lightenment and freedom. Democracy is thus the great 
open field for social achievement, offering scope for all 
intelligent and virtuous endeavor, alike for the individ- 
ual and the group. It is not, therefore, destructive, 
as many suppose, but rather constructive; and espe- 
cially does it subserve the welfare of mankind when 
vast numbers of individual men and women have been 
quickened by the spirit and inspired by the principles 
and ideals of true Christianity to "seek first the king- 
dom of God and his righteousness," and are then led 
into various forms of cooperation to establish a better 
social order. Such a blending of Christianity and 
democracy seems to be the one great, bright hope of 
the world. Only the beginnings of this fine blending 
have as yet been made, on a large scale, but they af- 
ford the promise of glorious advances in the near 
future. 

3. The goal which Christianity and democracy thus 
contemplate is the reign of truth, righteousness, lib- 
erty and love among men; which will bring reverence, 
peace, good-will, brotherhood; which will bring also, 
and just as surely, health, intelligence, wealth, leisure, 



CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY 139 

beauty and happiness for all. Nothing short of so 
comprehensive a good can satisfy the demands of hu- 
manity. This earth ought to be a paradise; it is full 
of riches and untold possibilities ; and if we believe 
in the God and Father whom Jesus proclaimed, we 
must believe that He intended it to be a blessed though 
temporary home for His children in the flesh — only 
He appears to have left to them the task, the honor, 
and the joy of making it into a paradise, thereby be- 
coming colaborers with Him in finishing this part of 
His creation. When men shall clearly perceive that 
this is their task, their great mission, to be fellow- 
workers with one another and with God in carrying 
the creative processes up and onward to the produc- 
tion of all needed wealth, health, knowledge, beauty, 
love, and happiness ; and when they shall begin to de- 
vote themselves to this great object as ardently as in 
former times they have sought to build up a mighty 
ecclesiasticism here, or to secure "an abundant en- 
trance" into the celestial city beyond, we shall then 
begin to realize the passionate dream of the ages and 
to fulfil the purpose for which the Savior of the world 
was born. Slowly we must learn how to do this ; 
slowly and patiently we must stumble on, through 
blundering and suffering, into the light of knowledge, 
into an understanding of justice, into wisdom and 
order and liberty, and into all spiritual blessedness 
and peace; and we must know from first to last that 
God calls us, His children, of every nation and kin- 
dred and tongue, to share with one another and with 
Him the ineffable joy of establishing here on earth a 
divine order of life for the entire race. Every Church 
that has a word of sympathy and encouragement for 
struggling humanity should lend its generous aid to 



140 MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION 

all such holy aspiration and endeavor. Never did a 
worthier ideal dawn upon the mind of man, or a worth- 
ier cause engage his heart. Let the inspiration of the 
purest religion he has ever known give him hope and 
strength and all kindly counsel as he seeks to incarnate 
in the concrete affairs of the social order the heavenly 
vision that glorifies his soul. 

We have had in the past, mainly, a Christianity that 
has been molded upon the ideals of monarchy. The 
world has been full of monarchical forms of govern- 
ment, full of the names and deeds of lords and kings, 
princes and potentates, mighty conquerors and august 
emperors. Inevitably the spirit of all this has influ- 
enced the Christian religion and its institutions quite 
as much as these have influenced the course of civiliza- 
tion. Only recently has democracy been sufficiently de- 
veloped to be able to react with any considerable power 
upon Christianity; and at the present moment it is in 
greater peril than ever before, in peril for its very exist- 
ence. If, happily, it shall survive — Heaven grant that 
it may! — the ordeal of the all-but-universal European 
war, it will arise somehow, sometime, with new vitality 
for its unfinished, stupendous task of making the so- 
cial order of the world one of equity and freedom; and 
an important part of this task will be to instil its true 
spirit into Christianity and the Christian Church. 
When this great work shall be carried much farther 
than it has yet been, when Christianity and its insti- 
tutions shall be thoroughly democratized, and democ- 
racy itself shall be thoroughly Christianized, there will 
come the era of blessedness for which the weary world 
has waited and prayed so long. A purified Christianity 
and a spiritualized democracy will point the way to 
peace through liberty and love. 



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